#like grad school and law school i just want to study and learn and write forever

[separatist-apologist]

Hi, I am your Ottoman Obession era Anon.

Yes, I would recommend the book. Shadows of God by Alan Mikhail. I think i pick thus book after halfway watching Rise of Empire : Ottoman in Netflix. Why you should read this book? Please allow me to share my thought

1. I am not someone from History study or Labguage study. Therefore, I want to read history book that are easy to understand and not overcomplicated. You know,most often I put down the book because I couldnt follow the story or underatand what is going on. And i am not native English speaker, and it just hard for me to read certain book. Or maybe the author tried to hard to impress reader with bombastic word that after googling the word, i am still dont see how it make sense.

But this book? Damn, i feel like a girly pop reading a diary. It doenst just blandly narrated a story but I found this book interesting because it also give us the insight of the character. If i look back, it follows Selim journey from his childhood to how he claimed the throne. I can understand what is going on in the book and not to get lost myself.

Ngl, since the historical figure mention in the book is Selim, i am now rooting for him to claimed the throne and praying for his mother wellbeing. And oh! I love Selim mother the most in the book. The author touched a lot of aspect being an ottoman prince mother and his mother contribution during Selim ruling as a gavernor in Trapzor. They are very close to each other and i found it really sweet.

2. It does not exclusively follow Seim jourbey. The author also gives us hindsight on what is happening aroubd Europe at the time. I have read history book before and they exclusively narrate the historical figure and it made me confuse when there is foreign figure appear around the main historical figure. But this book? It tell us what was happening around,guve an idea where actually this event set place and how it correlate to other event in history. It became so fun to read when I can recognize othe histrical figure. For example the borgia. I know the borgia family because of a manhwa (korean type of comic).

It so fun to read and trigger my roller coaster emotionally.

3. I found it more interesting when I learn that Selim as said in the book is not highly favoured by his father. Especially when he is sent far away from Constantinople (or istanbul atm) assigned as governor. They said that the more far away the son is sent to givern a state,the lesser the chance the son get to be a Sultan.

It really made me think, did Beron apply the same thing? Except his intention to worsen the sibling relationship? Because i think I remember in one of your fic you had this scene where eris mentioning how lucky for Elain that Lucien is exiled. Otherwise, Beron would pit her and his other daughter in law. Which to me was genius since Beron wanted his son to fight each other for the throne.

Even in the book, it mention that the father/current Sultan is not excluded from this fraticide practice. The son still can and have the right to claw their own father from the throne

I recommend this book. Why? Simple, because someone slow like me can read it and enjoy the drama in this book. I think you would too. Sorry for the rambling tho.

You're back! This is the exact kind of recommendation I'm looking for, ESPECIALLY from a non-fiction book. When I was in grad school, one of my professors discussed what made good, academic writing ESPECIALLY if you were writing for lay people. And the hallmark of it was accessibility. Even within niche topics, your writing shouldn't be so convoluted that you need to re-read sentences over and over.

You can get away with some of it in academic journals but I'd argue if I'm reading a paper on a topic I'm knowledgable and published in, and I'm asking myself "what the fuck are you trying to say?" you've done a bad job.

And books ESPECIALLY because history is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating subjects AND should be one of the most accessible ones as well. History is like gossip, it's half rumor, half fact depending on who is telling it. It's like when your friend texts, "can I say something fucked up?" like HELL YES tell me the atrocities and salacious gossip, I beg you.

I had a world history teacher in high school who once said history was the greatest soap opera and he made it accessible in a way that I've always been obsessed. And I'm saying all this because you said it was dumbed down enough for you to understand- but consider that it was WELL written enough to keep your attention rather than being so smugly satisfied with itself that the author renders the subject matter boring.

You sound exceptionally smart to me. You're reading in two languages! Give yourself WAY more credit and remember that a LOT of academics are just puffed up blow-hards that could use a regular person telling them, actually- you're not that interesting.

#im gonna pick it up this weekend and ill report back to you! #haters book club - but lovers edition #every month we pick a new history read lmao

[robotpals]

Ok I need to complain for a minute!!!

Law school is terrible and evil blah blah it kills your soul etc. but it is professional in a way that I really appreciated. Like you have exactly one thing that determines your grade—a final exam at the end of the semester. During the semester, you have tons to read, but there are no assignments or anything, just the chance of being cold called during class (which, while truly terrifying and mortifying, is over by the end of class). You need to be diligent enough to make and adhere to your own study schedule, but there’s no hand holding or busy work or wasting your time.

In comparison to that, my grad school program feels like being back in high school 🤪 if high school were WORSE! like I have tons of stupid little assignments and projects and papers to work on! During the semester!!! And it would be one thing if the assignments were rewarding or taught me anything, but they’re just. Silly. Like I had to write a narrative about my personal experiences with literacy (which. LOL) and in another class, I’m doing a group project where we’re pretending to be reference librarians—but unlike being an actual reference librarian (where, you know, you do a little research and try to help someone in an efficient use of both your and your patron’s time), we have to make a giant list of everything we looked at and then rank what we find and then reflect on our research process (LOL! What does that even mean!).

And the teaching is so lacklustre? Like at no point have I felt like any of my teachers have any idea what they’re doing. The first day in each of my three class, we didn’t even have any assignments or reading (which is INSANEE after law school) but none of my professors took the three minutes necessary to talk through the arc of the semester? Like—“each week you will have XX due. And the three big projects during the semester will be A, B, and C.” Instead, it was like “oh oops! I’ve spent twenty minutes saying pointless stuff but now let me tell you what my name is.” Class discussions are unfocused, lectures are nonsensical, the pacing of each session is like a nightmare—it sucks! Every single class sucks!

Also, I was told over and over again while applying that this program is responsive to all sorts of librarianship, so as an academic law librarian I would still be able to learn a lot… but that has not been my experience. Every time we get a stupid bs assignment, I email the professor to ask if I can make one or two small modifications to make it applicable to me and they’re always like “um… I don’t know….” (Like. I’ll ask if I can cite using the Bluebook or if I can do a “book talk” on an academic legal work instead of a novel and yet that’s too much? LOL?) And literally everything is tailored to public libraries—which is fine! And maybe makes sense for their student population! But I wish they would have been transparent and told me that before I gave them a bajillion dollars to go here (jk it’s dirt cheap compared to other programs. But I’m still going to complain 😈)

So I’m already predisposed to thinking that this whole program is a waste of my time! And then, last week I emailed my “advisor” (who, by the way, the first time I met him he was supposed to talk to me about my fall semester schedule, and instead he spent the whole entire time talking about his own research interests—also, btw, he’s not even a librarian so why exactly is he tenure track faculty here?!?) to ask him to meet with me to discuss that I want to do a thesis. And today, I sat in the zoom room for 45 minutes waiting for him and he never showed! I emailed three times and still haven’t gotten a response. So not only is the program treating me like a baby, but the professors don’t even have the decency to respect my time!!!

And it’s just so insanely frustrating because this program is meant to be doable as a person working full time but come on. How am I supposed to work full time and take a full semester load of classes when my classes are endless exercises in pointlessness and my professors don’t even bother to treat me like a fellow professional?

And it’s extra EXTRA annoying because, like, not be that person but I’m a tenure track faculty member at a law school. I outrank most of my teachers, who are just adjunct instructors 🤪 they should be bowing down to ME!

#and the thesis thing really annoys me because that’s like the one thing that might actually be beneficial to me…. but alas! #how silly of me to think I could get something valuable out of grad school!

[al-lewinsky]

i completely faked months of data research to suit my claims for all my final papers and got As across the board on these papers apparently

#and i wrote these papers like just bullshitting and writing whatever i felt like writing. like it rly was funsies for me #god my brain is so sexy i was born to do academia i should be a forever student #like grad school and law school i just want to study and learn and write forever #if i was a trust fund kid i would get 10 degrees and work at my own pace to maximize the funsies factor for me

[biaswreckme]

looking for something right | jjk/knj

Summary: When Jungkook needs to find a new apartment with a roommate to share expenses, he thinks that the universe must be either laughing at him or conspiring in his favor. Because when he finally finds an ad that fits his budget, his roommate is the tall and handsome man from the coffee shop.

Pairing: Namjoon/Jungkook

Member: Namjoon, Jungkook, Jimin, Yoongi

Length: 3568 words

Genre: smut, fluff

Type of AU: roommates au, university au, coffee shop au (kinda) (yes i used all my favorite tropes and aus in one fic)

Rating: 18+

Triggers/Warnings: heavy pining, slightly dom!Namjoon, slightly sub!JK, dry humping, handjob, dirty talking

Project: @thebtswritersclub​ April project with the theme Bloom 🌸

A/N: A huge thanks to my lobely beta-readers @taegularities​​ AND @voiceswithoutlips for help in revising and editing ♥ and also @voiceswithoutlips for the conversation that inspired the smutty scene :3

cross-posted on AO3 too!

Jungkook had seen him around campus before, more specifically in his favorite small coffee shop just outside the university that was much cheaper and actually catered to students’ financial range when it came to prices. He always had a book with him - usually a tome so big Jungkook thought he could do some real damage to someone with it -, reading and taking notes in the margins, which Jungkook thought was an atrocity, but the other boy didn’t seem bothered or apologetic.

He must be an early riser, because he was always there before he arrived, a steaming cup of hot coffee on the table and a bottle of water next to a small open pencil case and sticky notes. He looked too well-put together to be an undergrad, so he assumed he was a grad student. Philosophy maybe? Or something that demanded a constant consumption of large books. And maybe - just maybe - Jungkook shouldn’t have been spending so much on coffee when he could be brewing it at his apartment, but his apartment didn’t have the tall boy - man? - to discreetly look at while having his morning drink.

What his apartment did have was Jimin, his close friend and dance major that moved from Busan at the same time as him. They’d been sharing a place for some time now, but things were about to change. Jungkook knew this had been coming, but the day Jimin came home announcing that he’d been accepted for a scholarship abroad and that he would need to move soon came as a shock. He was extremely happy for him, but they would need to rush the process of moving out and Jungkook finding a new place or roommate.

They opted to let the apartment go, and so Jungkook began his search for a new place to share. He’d looked at listings, visited some places that were out of his budget, and then he found it. It was a small poster at the coffee shop’s cork board from a guy named Namjoon; the place was a block away and it fit perfectly into his budget and what he wanted for the location. It seemed too perfect; there had to be a catch, right? He texted the number - who calls anyone these days anyways? - and arranged to meet him at the coffee shop the next day before classes.

The catch. Oh, there was a catch.

He entered the place as usual, and the only person there was the tall man with a book on the table, steaming drink in his hand. He looked up at Jungkook who froze for a second, nodding his head and going to the counter quickly, barely mumbling his order to the barista trying to not freak out at the eye contact. So he avoided it for the next few minutes, until he heard his name being called out. What? How did he know his name?

“Jungkook?” the man repeated.

“Yes?” he took a deep breath and turned around at the sound of the deep voice.

“I’m Namjoon,” he introduced himself, standing up and motioning for Jungkook to join him at the table. No, no, no. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be him. The universe had to be joking. “Nice to meet you.” He reached out to shake Jungkook’s hand.

He was touching him. And he smelled so good. And his voice was so deep. Jungkook felt like a schoolgirl with her first crush, sighing at the very sight of Namjoon, whose name he now knew. He nodded in response and looked at the counter, trying to take a break from that smile, pretending he was checking if his order was ready. It was not.

“So, you’re interested in the apartment, right?”

“Ah, yeah… my friend and roommate right now, Jimin, you might have seen him around campus? He’s an amazing contemporary dancer, so he got this incredible and super rare scholarship to go study at this academy... I forgot the name,” he shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts and stop his rambling - to no avail, “anyway he’s moving too soon and I need to find a new place but everything’s so expensive. Yours fits the budget and is so close to uni and I couldn’t help but check you out, I mean, check it out…” He closed his eyes in embarrassment at the slip up, hearing Namjoon’s soft chuckle.

“Alright. What are you studying? Undergrad or grad school?”

“Media. Photography, film making, this stuff. I’m into it. I mean. Excuse me,” he was saved by the barista calling him, and as soon as he got back to the table, he took a sip, burning his tongue - but at least it stopped him from babbling for a second. “Undergrad still,” he complemented.

“Cool. I’m in grad school for social studies, so I’m a TA, but I also work with music production,” Namjoon began, but upon Jungkook’s raised eyebrows and brown eyes rounding up, he continued. “I wanted to get a better grasp on understanding society, so I can write better lyrics and try to integrate that into the music writing itself, you know?”

Jungkook nodded, fascinated. So he was cute and smart. And captivating. The interview didn’t really seem like one; it was so easy to fall into conversation with Namjoon that he did not notice time passing, and soon enough they were cut short, remembering they still had classes to attend.

“Alright, Jungkook. You don’t seem like a serial killer, so how about you visit the apartment to see if you like it?”

Jungkook choked on the last sip of his drink, and he really wanted to answer that he did not need to see the apartment to know he liked him, but he managed to catch himself before letting it out. He knew what Namjoon was seeing right now: his eyes wide open in shock, maybe even a light blush on his cheeks? His ears certainly felt hot. Dear lord, he needed to get a grip on himself.

“I’m not a serial killer, I promise. I’m a law abiding citizen. When are you free? I have classes the whole day today, but I’m free around lunchtime.” Jungkook wanted to dig a hole and hide right in there. Did he sound too eager?

“The sooner the better, but wait,” Namjoon stopped midway while getting up, looking very serious all of a sudden, “I forgot a very important question that might change my mind.”

Jungkook inhaled deeply, dreading the question that was about to come. Did he seem too forward and let the other man know he was into him? Would that be a deal breaker?

“Can you cook?”

“Ah… yes?” Jungkook was caught by surprise, confusion stamped on his face again. “Yes, I can. The basics at least.”

“Oh great! I can’t cook to save my life and I can’t really afford to live on take out anymore, so… we can work something out with that for sure!” He laughed, those dimples adorning his cheeks appearing again.

Soon Jungkook would learn that not only could Namjoon not cook, but he was actually a disaster and walking hazard in the kitchen. The man didn’t even know to properly hold a cutting knife to chop some vegetables or kimchi for a simple plate of fried rice. They attempted cooking together one time and that was enough for Jungkook. That was his kitchen from now on, Namjoon would be responsible for other chores but he himself would do all the cooking in the kitchen. Namjoon was even forbidden from boiling water on an electric kettle; that was the level of disaster-waiting-to-happen that he was.

The apartment was cozy and filled with books and musical equipment, and soon enough Jungkook’s filming materials were sharing the same space. It warmed his heart to come home in the evenings after class and see how his camera bag would be sitting beside Namjoon’s headphones, or how his black chunky sneakers rested beside the other man’s boots at the entrance. Whenever he put on or took off his shoes - which was almost every single day of the week, mind you - he would get a fuzzy feeling in his stomach. He would tilt his head quickly to try and shake the thoughts away, not letting himself hope too much. He had no idea or indication if Namjoon even liked men, and he had no idea why he was even wishing for something more.

He was not exactly sure if he could pinpoint the precise moment in time when his adoration had turned into real infatuation with Namjoon. Maybe it was the fact that the older one was a disaster in the kitchen and always thanked Jungkook, each and every single meal the younger one cooked. Maybe it was the look he sported whenever he was engrossed in a book, glasses almost falling off his nose before a finger would softly push it back up (and Jungkook had found out that he only used his glasses comfortably at home, preferring contacts whenever he was out).

Maybe it was the way he always listened to Jungkook’s ramblings, no matter the topic of interest, from deep art films he had to watch (and Namjoon would actually sit down and watch with him) to the new game he’d been playing. Maybe it was the way he would always wish him a good morning and a good night with that dimpled smile. Maybe it was the way he offered to produce a freaking song to be used as a soundtrack to one of Jungkook’s short films. Maybe it was the way they ended up watching the first snowfall of the season together, side by side, looking out of the living room window. Maybe it was the way Namjoon’s left arm enveloped Jungkook’s shoulders in a soft side hug while they watched the snowflakes drift down and when Jungkook didn’t move, those dimples appeared on his cheeks.

But that was the only physical proximity for a while. The next day Jungkook could barely look at Namjoon and spent the day over at Yoongi’s place. He arrived just in time when Jimin was video calling his boyfriend, and proceeded to freak out about watching the first snow of the season together and it had to mean something, right? He put his arm around him while they stood in front of the window, Jimin, what the hell did it mean?

All the while Yoongi watched him with a cocked head, as if he was thinking hard about something, and then an amused smile shaped his lips. Jungkook thought it must have been because he had never had such a strong reaction for a boy - a man - before, especially one who was his roommate. Was it a brotherly hug? Namjoon hadn’t said anything or done anything else, did it mean he was interested in him or did he see Jungkook as a little brother? He was full of questions and asking them to the wrong people for sure, but he did not want to risk the little he had with Namjoon.

It was winter. The small affectionate moments he had with Namjoon were keeping him going, fueling and warming his heart enough to get through the coldest season. They watched movies together on the couch, huddled up under a blanket with cups of tea warming their hands. Going to the coffee shop in the morning for a cup of coffee before classes. Namjoon waiting for him outside the media building with a cup of hot chocolate in the evenings when he had classes later, walking back to the apartment together. Watching Namjoon work, focused on creating the loop he had been struggling with for a while, nothing seemed to fulfill what he wanted. Namjoon watching him work, editing an experimental short film he filmed for a class group project.

The freezing weeks passed like that, with Jungkook cooking different types of jjigae for them, Namjoon being allowed back in the kitchen mostly to keep him company, telling Jungkook he was hungry and will it take much longer?

He visited Yoongi once a week, calling Jimin together so he could freely talk about his growing fondness for Namjoon and get some advice he was keeping for when he thought the timing was right. Yoongi told him he had to create the right timing and he would actually probably be surprised if he acted on his desires. But Yoongi couldn’t know. He still had no clue about the mystery that was Namjoon’s love life, only that he had never taken anyone to the apartment.

Whether he was even interested in that, Jungkook had no idea, but he also had no courage to ask. Jimin suggested he did what he knew best: work with images. So he had been filming small snippets of their lives, their walks to their coffee shop, comfortable scenes at the apartment when no one else was looking but Jungkook through the camera lenses. Sometimes Namjoon asked to film Jungkook too, or positioned the camera so both of them were caught in the recording.

Winter went and spring came. Just as the flowers were starting to blossom on the street outside their windows, Jungkook was getting ready to show Namjoon the film. As he edited throughout the weeks, he noticed more than once how fondly he would look at the older man, and he could almost swear the gaze was reciprocated when he was not looking, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up. He made Yoongi promise he could crash at his place for a while in case things got weird and Namjoon kicked him out, to which Yoongi had let out a full laugh, something the boy had never heard before, and merely gave him a Sure, almost as if he was mocking Jungkook.

And so the day came. He chose the perfect song, adjusting his editing to fit the rhythm and lyrics, hoping it would express his love. Yes, he would call it love. He fell in love with the good person that the man was, with all the small quirks and imperfections.

He told Namjoon he had something to show, that he had finally finished his project and wanted to him to see. He waited for Namjoon to come back from his day out nervously, heart racing as he made them some tea while the man showered and got into more comfortable clothes. The video was ready to be played and Jungkook almost gave up, but decided this was the time.

He could not hide his feelings anymore.

And so he pressed play and closed his eyes. He had heard that song over and over again while editing, perfecting each millisecond of the final product. His heart was beating almost as loudly as the song, the sound filling his ears, his fingers clenching the fabric of his oversized black t-shirt, a shaky breath leaving his nose when he heard the final notes.

“Jungkook?”

He took a deep breath before opening his eyes, suddenly finding Namjoon’s face much closer than he was expecting, the man’s eyes staring into his own.

“I love you, too.”

The words had barely registered in his brain - although they had been imprinted on his heart - when Namjoon’s pillowy lips pressed softly against his, one of the man’s hands caressing his cheek, wiping at a tear he did not notice had fallen. He sighed into the kiss, relief perpassing his entire body. He loved him. When it finally clicked for him, his brain finally sent the necessary signals that made his arms go around Namjoon’s neck, his fingers entangling in the man’s hair and pulling him even closer. They moaned almost in synchrony when their tongues touched for the first time, Jungkook’s body almost undulating in a way that made Namjoon tug his hips towards himself, making the younger man sit on his lap.

“Fuck, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” the older broke the kiss, staring into Jungkook’s eyes, “been waiting for you,” he murmured against the younger’s lips. As their mouths clashed in an open-mouthed kiss, Namjoon pulled Jungkook’s longer hair, making him bend back so he could have access to the expanse of his neck.

Jungkook moaned when Namjoon’s lips pressed onto his skin, licking and biting and sucking and definitely leaving some marks, and all he could do was clutch the older’s biceps, shifting his hips to try and alleviate some of the pressure that was making his pants tighter. The hand that was not entangled in Jungkook’s dark strands made its way down his body, grabbing a firm buttcheek first, then going to the younger’s hip.

“Wanna ride me?” Namjoon asked low on Jungkook’s ear, biting his lobe after.

“Yes, hyung” the word came out as a whine from Jungkook’s lips, his hips starting to move aided by Namjoon’s firm grip. “Your thighs…” he started, but couldn’t continue when he adjusted his hips just right and his hard erection pressed against one of Namjoon’s thighs.

“Yeah? I’ve seen you looking at them, Kook. So go on, ride my thigh, come on,” he said as he flexed his muscles, his other hand joining the one at Jungkook’s hip, one on each side now to help him move, to watch him fall apart.

Jungkook just closed his eyes and surrendered, his hips moving on their own accord, pressing his cock closer and closer to Namjoon’s, soft whines and pleas tumbling out of his mouth as he lost himself in the movements. It was too much and not enough, his erection pressing just right so his skin glided back and forth on the fabric of his underwear stimulated by the older’s thigh, the couch too small for this - yet he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else at the moment. He needed it, and the sense of urgency overtook his body, his movements more frantic as he gripped the older’s hair and kissed him sloppily, letting out his breathy whimper against Namjoon’s lips. He wanted it.

“I’m… I’m close, hyung,” he had to pause to whimper again, a shiver going through his body from how close he was. “I want to touch you, hyung.”

“Touch me, Kook, make me cum with you, hold on just a bit,” Namjoon all but moaned into his lips when one of the younger’s hands reached into his pants.

Namjoon’s cock was heavy and hard and big, yet the skin was so soft in his hand, and Jungkook immediately closed his fist around it, his palm wet from the precum that had already gathered on the bulbous head, aiding his movement. And if Jungkook thought Namjoon’s speaking voice was deep, his mind and ears were certainly not prepared for the low guttural moan leaving those swollen lips, his own hips stuttering, pleasure coursing through his entire body, from the tip of his toes to the ends of his hair, his cock pulsating with release inside his pants as he pressed it against the strong thigh beneath him. He took a second to breathe and enjoy the tingling in his body, but soon noticed his hand had stopped. His gaze met Namjoon’s, his hand moving up and down inside the man’s pants.

“Cum for me, hyung, please,” he begged, wanting to pay attention to that moment of euphoria when it crossed his hyung’s face. And so it did; he watched as Namjoon threw his head back on headrest of the couch, hips raising and fucking into the tight grip around his cock, that heavy moan escaping his lips again as Jungkook felt the thickness of the release coating his hand. But he kept moving, prolonging Namjoon’s pleasure until it became too much and his hand was stopped, a smile stamped on the older man’s face.

There were no words needed for a while, until it seemed to finally click for Jungkook.

“Wait, you said you love me too.”

“I’ve been trying to express it for a while... And your eyes do this cute thing where they widen whenever you think you are caught and should change your gaze, so I noticed you were interested too. Plus Yoongi told me.”

“Wait, what?” He turned his head fast to look at Namjoon again, “You know Yoongi-hyung?”

And so he explained how they’ve known each other for years and how they’ve collaborated in music production before, under the names of RM and Agust D. He’d heard of RM, even heard Yoongi mentioning it more than once, and thinking back, he kept talking about RM more and more after he moved in with Namjoon. Oh. And then he remembered Yoongi’s smirks and head shakes, his certainty that Jungkook would not be turned down.

“You still haven’t said it.”

“I love you, Namjoon-hyung.”

And as Jungkook woke up the next morning, warm and cozy under Namjoon’s blankets, legs entangled and bodies pressed together, he breathed easier, lighter, happier. And he made a mental note to thank Jimin for applying for that scholarship and being so good that he’d gotten it. Maybe he would have met RM at some point, but he didn’t want to think of other possibilities. Living together and falling in love, getting to know each other was perfect for now.

They met in autumn, got closer through the cold days in winter, and their love bloomed in spring.

He could barely wait to see what summer had in storage for them.

#bts smut #bts fluff #jeon jungkook #jungkook smut #jeon jungkook smut #btscreatorscorner #thebtswritersclub #bangtaninn #bts au #jungkook imagine #jungkook fanfic #jungkook fic #kim namjoon #namjoon smut #namjoon imagine #namjoon fanfic #namjoon fic #namkook #rap monster #rm #rm smut #smut

[obliviatestudies]

3rd YEAR of UNI

hey everyone! if you’re just stumbling upon this post and are new here, i’m going into my 3rd year of undergrad in bio for health sci a.k.a pre-med sorta deal! i did this post last year and u guys loved it, i also think its a great ways for us #studyblrs to share more . this is just an update into what courses i’ll be taking this year, life updates, tips i learnt from last year + more!

PICKING COURSES

my courses:

I'm a health sci bio major with a double minor in chem + business! so here is what my full-time year of studies looks like (5 courses per semester)

physiology of neurons & muscles

human development

structural biochem

metabolism & bioenergetics

neurosci

statistics

lab in cell & molecular bio

molecular bio

fundamentals of marketing

managing projects & business plans

for freshman, your courses are pretty set and you likely won't have much choice around what you actually want to take, so unless you're an upper-year, you likely won't see more interesting course titles like what i have above. not much for an update in this section, i planned most of my courses last year, but the most frustrating thing that happened was 9/10 courses i wanted to take were in my fall semester originally, so i have to do A LOT of rearranging, anywho.....

scheduling:

i'll link last years post here as i went into pretty deep detail of how i schedule my courses and how you can too!

other tips + updates:

it’s always okay to change your programs!! (ie. major, minor, specialist) don’t let the standard of “a 4-year degree” fool you into thinking you can’t take longer. its always a good idea to look ahead and try to plan, but this age of our lives is when we're changing the most and really finding who we are and what we want to do with the rest of our lives. it's definitely not something to rush.

if you have to do summer courses, or retake courses, or take an extra semester, don't beat yourself up. it happens to 99% of people!

take me for example!! i went into school thinking 100% i wanted to go down the med path, now here i am starting my 3rd year and I'm not so sure. I'm more so looking at doing my masters in physical therapy. you change, life changes, and you find what works BEST for you and the path you want for your life.

ALSO your path doesn't have to be linear, or the typical; if you want to go to med/law/other post grad school, but your grades or extra curricular didn't necessarily cut it, that's okay! maybe you'll work somewhere for a year or two and go back to school and get in. basically what I'm trying to say is if there is a career path that you love, don't give up, and don't think you have to get there the same way as someone else did.

currently, my fall courses are all completely online (minus 1 in-person tutorial) i hope most of you will be in-person, unlike me. but i'll continue to post both online and in-person study tips as the year progresses.!

LIFE BESIDES SCHOOL

this summer i was lucky enough to work as an online PT, and this will probably continue part time into the school year. besides my other social accounts kinda blowing up, working on Syrse Dawn, I've been crazy busy with everything. I'm a little worried about balancing everything come the school szn, but as usual, i always prioritize my school work

we love academic validation haha....no but seriously, i love learning and school, and doing well has always been important to me, so while my work is important, mental health and school come first.

right now some passion projects and summer bucket list things I've been working on are finishing a current novel I'm writing (haven't finished writing one since 2015), reading 1 more book, filling a sketchbook, going for a sunrise swim and honestly just spending as much time with my friends as fam as possible!

• • • • • •

like last year, i’d love to create a chain of studyblrs doing an update like this, sharing their courses for the year, how they organize them, updates + more! so if you get tagged, add to this chain + tag 5 more studyblr accounts!!

i’m tagging: @studyblr @felix-studies @studyingatsunrise @luminous-studiess @starrystvdy @studylustre

if you have any questions for me, my ask box is always open! i answer all the questions in my ask, so don’t be afraid to hit me up there

hope this helps you a little bit and you get to learn a bit about me xx

#college studyblr #studyblr community #studyblr #study #3rd year #uni talks #uni studyblr #uni help #uni tips #first day of uni #byobliviatestudies #about the blogger #school talk #online school #school help #school things #how to study #an update #schedule #planning #study motivation #motivation #productivity challenge #productivity #study tips #studying

[mkstrigidae]

Current WIPs and Fic Concepts

I promised I would do this yesterday, and then I forgot!!! (I was very sleep deprived). Anyways, here are a bunch of the WIP premises that I have in my 'unfinished drafts' folder. Most have at least a few pages written for them, but I love them all! ☺️💕

- A Santa Clarita Diet AU (Jonsa) Takes place in sunny southern California, where a shitty dinner at a mediocre restaurant turns into a huge problem for Jon and Sansa when Sansa's heart stops beating. Although she seems fine, Jon is flabbergasted several days later as he watches his wife- who alphabetizes their pantry and refuses to let anyone wear shoes in the house- rip the throat out of one of the sleazy new partners at their law firm, eating half of him before anyone processes what's going on. Hilarity ensues as Sansa's inhibitions and filter disappear, Arya ropes an extremely confused Gendry into helping figure out what the hell is going on just because he moderates the zombie forum on reddit, and Jon tries to deal with the fact that the woman he loves more than anything is now a humanitarian. He really could use a drink. (This one is actually mostly complete, but i need to refine a few things- i really love it. It's as gory and irreverent as the show, so viewer discretion advised, but it's a BLAST to write).

- A Thor/MCU AU (Jonsa, Steve Rogers/Sansa)- Asgardian prince Aegon is banished to Midgard after one too many arrogant decisions, and is promptly hit by a van containing Dr. Sansa Stark, Dr. Barristan Selmy, and Margaery Tyrell- two astrophysicists studying wormholes and Sansa's best friend and pseudo-intern. Marg yells at him, he yells back, Sansa tases him, and Barristan didn't sign up for the kind of heavy lifting that getting a 200+ pound slab of muscle into the back of a van takes. And then Aegon's younger brother, Jon, shows up, in the middle of an identity crisis because, apparently, he's adopted. He wasn't intending to stay, but he's rather drawn to Dr. Stark and her brilliance, and against her better judgement, she starts to trust him, and maybe even like him. This story is in about three parts so far- the first is based on 'Thor' and the second on 'The Avengers' and are fully Jonsa, and the third started as a family bonding story between the Stark kids and Tony (Ned and Tony are second cousins, and Ned was really supportive of Tony in rehab without expecting anything in return), and accidentally turned into a Steve Rogers/Sansa Stark story, which is a pairing i am HERE for. A lot of this one is written, but it needs some fill in before publishing, although it's one of my favorites that i've written to go back and actually read.

- A Star Wars AU (Jonsa) where Sansa and Arya are Alderaanian princesses who are off planet when Alderaan is destroyed- Sansa as a senator and Arya as a pilot, both working for the rebellion, and jon is a smuggler who does not know how all of these people got on his ship and why two princesses are sassing him. His copilot, Tormund (yes he's a wookie), thinks it is hilarious. I started this one just the other day, and it's already thirty pages long, most of them involving Sansa and Arya sassing people. Dany is a leader in the rebellion, Roose Bolton is the emperor, and Barbrey Dustin is a disgruntled former jedi trying to live in peace on a remote planet until another Stark crashes into her life and harangues her into teaching again.

- A witches/magic AU (Jonsa) where the Starks run an apothecary and spellcasting supplies shop. Jon had been completely in the dark about magic before his mother confessed to being born into a family of witches. He finds himself traveling to her hometown, trying to understand her world more clearly, and what it means for him. On the way, he develops something of a crush on the red-headed shop clerk who brews the best headache potions in town. Featuring lots of magical shenanigans, this is one of my favorites in the folder :)

- A 24 hour diner AU (Jonsa) where Jon is a local mob boss, and Sansa works the late shift at Seaworth's diner to buy textbooks for the PhD she's working on in botany. Sansa's running from memories, and Jon has a soft spot for the red-headed waitress who always remembers how he likes his coffee.

- An East of the Sun, West of the Moon AU!!! (Jonsa) This is one of my fav fairy tales, and of course i couldn't resist Jon as a direwolf striking a deal with the starks!

- A Roomates AU (Jonsa)- Arya, Jon, Tormund, and Sam have been renting the same house together off Winterfell's campus for years- but when Sam moves in with his girlfriend, they need one more person on the lease. Sansa, about to relocate to Winterfell for grad school, finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her and that her housing plans have fallen through, all on the same day. Needless to say, she's a bit upset when she calls Arya to relay the news. There's a simple solution here, if Arya and Tormund can stop teasing Jon about his crush for five minutes. (any excuse to write tormund and arya roasting jon, tbh).

- A Fae AU (Jonsa)- When Sansa, a baker living in the city, washes her face in an enchanted spring on a camping trip, she gains the sight as a result. Suddenly able to see the fae underworld all around her is disorienting and terrifying. Sansa tries to conceal it- afraid of what might happen if the fae around her know that she can see them- but slips up, and catches the attention of Jon Snow- one of the lords of the unseelie court.

- A nuclear winter wasteland AU (Jonsa)- (?? I don't even know how to describe this premise, haha) where the Starks are living and running the Free Winterfell settlement in Siberia after a worldwide nuclear meltdown. Before the fallout, Sansa was one of the world's preeminent researchers in plant genetics and pathology, and works at the settlement to create newer, disease and radiation resistant crops to distribute for free to other settlements, aiming to break up the monopoly that Lannister Corp has on the market. Jon is a scavenger, searching throughout Siberia for his sister Rhae who disappeared several years previously. When he runs across Arya Starkovna, helping her fight off another band of radiation ravaged scavengers is just instinct- he doesn't think twice about it. In thanks, she brings him to the Winterfell settlement, where her brother Robb offers Jon sanctuary and resources, in exchange for serving as a bodyguard for Sansa when she travels to other settlements. Sansa is not particularly thrilled by this arrangement, but given that multiple parties seem to want her dead, she doesn't have much of a choice but to accept his company.

- A reincarnation AU (Jonsa)- of sorts. Robb is an archaeologist who finds a strange set of runes at a site up north, and immediately calls in Jon Snow- a historian and expert in said ancient language, as well as an old university friend of Robb's. When he arrives though, Robb shows him their most valuable finds- two mysterious ice blocks, with what appear to be perfectly preserved bodies from over a thousand years ago. No one could ever have imagined that either of them were still alive, but when the ice melts, revealing two very alive girls, the entire crew is instantly buried in NDAs, and given an assignment from the Westerosi government to figure out what the hell was going on. Sansa and Arya wake up, extremely confused about the world they live in, trying to adapt and mourning all that they've lost, even as the people around them wear familiar faces.

- Soulmates AU (Jonsa)- (Yes, another one, I love this dumb trope) Trauma surgeon and medical resident Sansa Stark is having a very bad day, and ends up meeting her soulmate during what she thinks is a mugging gone wrong. Fortunately, he’s not the one mugging her, just an intervening bystander, but she ends up slightly shot nonetheless. Sansa’s fretting about bleeding on the upholstery in his car, but Jon is a bit more worried about her injuries than the blood stains. He’s a bit confused when she threatens him if he takes her to a specific hospital, nearly has a nervous breakdown when she insists on doing her own triage, and is very charmed when she insists on ice cream after taking pain meds at the hospital. On Sansa’s part, she’s a little less concerned about being shot, and a bit more concerned about whatever weird first impression she’s making to her soulmate while high as a kite on pain pills. (this one just needs some tweaking to be postable- I'm not sure if it's going to be a oneshot or a series, but i love what I have already)

- A Demon/Archivist AU (Jonsa)- where Sansa works in the university's historical archives in Oldtown, and is learning to restore old texts with her fellow student and friend, Alleras (Trans Sarella is an amazing concept). When Joffrey Baratheon shows up with a pile of old books from his family's library to donate, Sansa is eager to get away from his sleaze, and accidentally takes one of the books home with her in her rush to leave. Unbeknownst to her, it's more than it appears, and when she leaves it open overnight, she accidentally summons forth Jon- an ancient, powerful, and extremely annoyed demon who is under a curse, and now hers to command. As Jon and Sansa try to get used to this new normal, the Lannisters (unaware that Joffrey had donated the tome) try desperately to find the book and it's owner, wanting Jon's power for themselves, and putting Sansa in considerable danger unless she can figure out how to break Jon's curse. Fortunately, she's a pretty good researcher, even if Jon is initially a bit of a grump. (This is based on a total wish-fulfillment mary-sue type premise for something I wrote when I was thirteen, and I revisited it and wanted to see what it would look like if i took it very seriously, and i am really enjoying it so far. It's a love letter to the terrible, heartfelt writing i was doing in middle school that created the foundations for my writing today, and so much fun).

The one that I am MOST excited about though:

- A Pacific Rim AU!!!! (Ned/Cat, Gendrya, Braime, Sansa/Jon Umber)-Twins Sansa and Robb Stark have always been completely in tune with each other, and when your parents are Jaeger pilots and your mother invented the neural handshake, what option is there but the Jaeger academy? Sansa studies to be an engineer, but ends up copiloting the Jaeger 'Winter Wolf' with her twin brother, after they lose Ned Stark to cancer. When Robb is ripped out of the conn-pod and killed by a kaiju while he's still connected to Sansa, she barely manages to kill the creature before stumbling back to shore, traumatized, grieving, and swearing that she'll never pilot again.

Unfortunately, the Kaiju don't stop just because Sansa does, and when the end of the world is imminent, Marshall Catelyn Stark orders both her daughter and former pilot Jaime Lannister (who lost his twin and copilot, Cersei, several years previously) back to Hong Kong for one final stand. Forced to face both her demons and an irate Arya, furious that Sansa had abandoned the rest of them after Robb's death, Sansa and Arya have to figure out how to pilot Winter Wolf together before the apocalypse comes for them all.

Featuring Marshall Catelyn Stark (commander of the Hong Kong Shatterdome, inventor of the neural handshake, former Jaeger pilot, and BAMF), Sansa x Jon Umber (Yes i know it's a rare pair but i've always kind of loved the idea of them, even though we know so little about him), Kaiju parts dealer and smuggler Petyr Baelish, bickering kaiju biologist Dany and theoretical mathematician Jon Snow, LOCCENT officer Theon, lots of snark, lots of angst and heartfelt conversations, and a weird friendship between snarky-grieving-asshole Jaime Lannister and kind-quiet-grieving Sansa Stark, who are the only two people in the world who know what it's like to lose a copilot and a twin in the drift.

Thanks for reading guys!! There are more, but some of them I just don't know how to explain quite yet, haha. I'd love to hear what you guys think about these!

#my writing #fanfics #fanfic wip #jonsa #jonsa fic

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Developer Advocate

I often talk about how Linguist Twitter is a great place to hang out. Twitter can be a big, confusing, noisy platform, but I’ve enjoyed building a little world full of linguists, and one of those excellent people is Rachael Tatman. It has been great to follow Rachael as she completed her PhD, got a job in data visualisation with Kaggle, and then moved on to chatbot maker Rasa. Rachael is not only a great linguist, but a thoughtful linguistics communicator. Her blog Making Noise and Hearing Things has a wonderful back catalogue covering data science, professionalism and emoji. You too can follow Rachael on Twitter (@rctatman).

What did you study at university?

My BA is in Linguistics and English Literature (I double majored) from William and Mary (in Virginia, USA) and then I went to the University of Washington for grad school. I got my PhD in linguistics in 2017, and my dissertation was "Modeling the Perceptual Learning of Novel Dialect Features". Over the course of my PhD in particular I moved more and more into natural language processing, although I was still pretty much calling myself a computational linguist.

What is your job?

I'm a senior developer advocate for a company called Rasa. We make an open source framework for building chatbots/virtual assistants and free software for improving your assistant over time. (If you're a business using the free software and want additional fancy features, we also have a paid enterprise version.) Developer advocates are basically peer-to-peer technical educators. Our job is to help make it as easy as possible for developers to use whatever product it is that we support. So my day to day involves a lot of developer education–things like writing blog posts, giving talks and making videos–as well as providing technical support and product feedback. Because I have a research background and Rasa has a research team I'll sometimes help out with research projects as well.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

It helps me every day! One great example is that it's given me a good idea of the typological diversity of languages in the world. Since Rasa is a language-agnostic platform (we want to be able to support as many languages as possible) knowing what sort of differences there are between languages is very helpful. My linguistics training also taught me how to communicate complex topics succinctly and accurately which is a huge part of developer relations and related fields, like technical writing.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

Be really kind to yourself, especially when you're on the job market. There's a large emotional regulation component to searching for jobs that I don't think gets talked about enough. Find something that helps you disconnect from thinking about work or looking for work and commit to doing it often. That could be something as simple as following along with yoga videos in your room or setting up a weekly time to play video games with your friends or just taking a walk outside every day, maybe with your children if you have them. Building a brain break into my routine and keeping it stable really, really helped me both in graduate school and when I was on the job market.

Also: your goals and identity will change over time. You may think of yourself as an academic now but won't in 5 years. That's ok. It's normal. And it's also normal for those shifts to come with a grieving process, especially if you weren't expecting them. Give yourself grace, and time, to feel your feelings. And know that you can have a rich, happy fulfilling life that looks nothing like what you're planning for yourself right now.

Any other thoughts or comments?

The great thing about studying and having a fascination for language is that it's everywhere. Your linguistic training will give you a set of lenses you can look through for the rest of your life, and that's a thing to celebrate and cherish in its own right.

Related interviews:

Interview with a Product Manager

Interview with a Senior Content Project Manager at Transparent Language

Interview with a Linguistic Project Manager at a Language Tech Company

Recent interviews:

Interview with an ESL teacher, coach and podcaster

Interview with a Juris Doctor (Master of Laws) student

Interview with the Director of Education and Professional Practice at the American Anthropological Association

Interview with a Research Coordinator, Speech Pathologist

Interview with a Dance Instructor and Stay-at-Home Mom

Check out the full Linguist Jobs Interview List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews  

#language #linguistics #linguistics jobs #lingjobs #interview #technology #computational linguistics

[killerandhealerqueen]

Hi! How are you? I see you're delving into mriad, I think I tried to give it a shot once but then I saw comments where people really didn't like it because of the female lead and so I didn't bother. By your posts I'm... thinking... I made... the right call?

Sorry you're thinking of having to close your askbox because of the prompts, but just remember it's only a hobby, you're not bound by it, it's okay if it takes you a lot time or if you decide to just leave it for a while or just leave it. Should be fun and not stressful.

Is school going well? It's pretty cool that you're doing forensics. I could never, I am not good at math or science but I'm very admiring of you for sticking with it. But it is kind of funny because I'm taking a court services course now, I guess we have something in common of wanting to work in the law/court system! Although you more on the police end, I'm guessing? I'm not sure what exactly it entails but I'm sure you'll be great at it! :)

Rose! Hello!

Yes, I am diving into the world of MRIAD and I'm enjoying it so far, I really like Lu Yao and Qiao Chusheng but I cannot stand Bai Youning. Apparently everyone is telling me that she was an after thought and added as a love interest so really, if we wanted to, we could just ignore her existence all together, which is what I'm planning on doing (and it seems that the fandom basically ignores her too, so that's nice). Killer and Healer really blessed us with Chu Ran and Zhong Yiren and I'm grateful everyday that we got those two amazing women, especially now when watching the trainwreck that is Bai Youning.

About the askbox thing, I don't really wanna close it but I'm also tired of making like the same posts over and over again. And every time I make the post, I always feel like I'm complaining, you know? Like, I'm sure people when they read it are like you should be grateful that you're getting writing prompts and I am! I really am grateful that people are coming to me and asking me for prompts, it's all I've ever wanted since I've joined tumblr. I've always wanted to be known as a famous tumblr fandom writer and I think I'm achieving that now and I don't want to seem ungrateful because I'm not. I'm just afraid of getting overwhelmed, especially with grad school and everything. And I know it's just a hobby, I know it is, but to me sometimes I consider it work and I know that's a bad habit to have because once you turn something fun into work, it's not fun anymore. Also, my brain likes to keep setting this ridiculous goal of like...finishing 59 prompts by the end of the year and I'm just like...buddy, that's not fucking happening. It's not, especially with the amount of words I crank out for certain fics/fandoms. So yeah, hopefully won't have to close my askbox cuz I don't wanna do that, but I know a lot of my writer friends do close their asks whenever they get too many prompts or whatever so...we'll see. Probably won't close my ask but if it gets to be too much, I might. Idk. We'll see. I always say I'm going to do stuff like this but I never do

So far, school is going really well. It's interesting and I'm really enjoying my night class. It's a criminal profiling class and we're basically learning how to profile not just people but scenes as well and we're learning how to profile by studying serial murderers and rapists. It's a lot of fun (in my opinion). I'm really happy I chose forensics (trust me, no scientist likes math, none of us). Yeah, I do want to work probably more on the police end because I just don't understand the law the way lawyers do, but I do understand crime/death scenes.

Thanks for checking in! Really means a lot!

#sass answers #rose edition #thanks for checking in!

[louiseleblancdiggory]

can you write something to rowaelin based on the song lost without you by freya ridings please 🥺 i love ur fanfics

This was supposed to be angst but it ended up being only a it angsty and a little fluffy? Idk, it’s quick and I think it’s cute. I would have posted earlier but I wanted my friend’s opinion first. Hope you like it!

Lost without you

--

Rowan knew he and his girlfriend were different.

He had known since the moment they had met, and every second after it.

Rowan was quiet, usually kept to himself. He liked nothing more than to study anything related to law and spend time with his girlfriend. Aelin, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. She was lively, cheerful. She was constantly dirty with paint, constantly sweaty after working with her sculptures. They had started dating in the beginning of junior year in high school, and the difference had never been something bad.

Until that Friday.

That day, as Rowan stared at his acceptance letter into Orynth College— the best college he could go to if he wanted to do pre law—, the difference weighted on him.

Weighted on him because Aelin wasn’t going with him.

She had gotten her acceptance letter the same day he had, but it had been a different one. A program, she had been offered, to travel the world and learn from some of the best artists alive. It was an extremely rare and exclusive program, and the fact that Aelin had gotten in made him so, so proud. He knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t— let it pass.

And that broke him.

Broke him because his girlfriend was going to leave for four years, and he didn’t know what to do. Neither of them liked the idea of a distance relationship, and there was only one other alternative then.

Breaking up.

Rowan loved Aelin like he had never loved anyone else, and he knew she loved him just as much. He thought it would have been easier if they didn’t love each other as much, thought it would have been easier if it was just a high school fling, but imagining his life without Aelin’s cheerfulness and mirth made his chest crack. Imagining his life not loving Aelin was brutal.

The following days had been hard. As both of them accepted the entrance, it looked like they were drifting apart more and more everyday. They tried to desperately hold onto each other, savor the last weeks together for the next four years. Rowan took her to every place they had ever been in a date, and Aelin drew hundreds of sketches of them. They tried to act like the loving couple they were, tried to joke around as if she wasn’t about to leave in two weeks. But it weighted on both of them, and they only let it show during the nights when they held onto each other so strongly sometimes it left bruising marks.

Now, standing on the platform Aelin was going to catch the train to Banjali, he wished he had held her a little while longer. She was hugging her parents and Aedion. She had already said goodbye to Lysandra, the brunette smiling at her best friend but tears rimming her green eyes.

“If you stop calling, we will hunt you down, fireheart.” Rhoe said, only half jokingly. He gave one last kiss on his daughter head and jerked his chin in Rowan’s direction.

The moment Aelin turned to him, her face crumpled a little, tears rolling down her cheeks. Wordlessly, he pulled her into a hug, peppering her head with kisses as she buried her face on his chest. “I will miss you so much, Ro.”

“I’ll miss you, too, fireheart.” He said, the words feeling too big in his tight throat. “I’ll miss you so, so much.”

“I’ll come back, you know? In four years.” She sniffled. Face still on his chest. “And I would never ask you to wait for me, but please don’t forget me. Or treat me like a stranger when I come back.”

“I would never, Ace.” He said and she cried harder. Aelin had always been close to her family and to Rowan and Lysandra. To be letting all of them go at the same time must have been brutal for her. Rowan wished he could do something, make her feel better in some way. But he also knew Aelin was strong and even though she was hurt right now, she would be happy eventually.

“I would stay. If you asked me, I would stay.” She said quickly through the tears. Rowan’s chest constricted, and a selfish part of him wanted to ask. Wanted it so bad. He wanted to have his girlfriend in the same college as him, doing all college shit together. He didn’t want things to change, and he knew that in that moment, if he asked, she would stay.

But he also knew that she was saying that because it was hurting, and also knew she would regret it later. And she wouldn’t regret Rowan, but herself. And Rowan wouldn’t be able to live seeing her regret the past everyday because he had been selfish.

“Do you wanna see the world, Ace?” He asked softly, his voice not that sad anymore.

She raised her face to look at him. It was pinkish, a few strands of her golden hair stuck on her cheeks because of her crying. Gently and smiling, Rowan rubbed his thumbs on her cheeks, taking away the strands. She closed her eyes, savoring his touch. Even crying, Aelin was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“I want to see the world.” She said opening her turquoise and gold eyes, voice firm.

“Then go.” He smiled at her again, leaving her embrace. She smiled sadly at him, but five minutes later she raised her chin, puffed her chest and got into the train.

And then she left, Rowan watching her go to conquer her dreams. The whole world if she wished.

And Rowan felt so, so lost in that instant.

————————

It had hurt like a bitch.

Rowan had never felt so lonely and cold. Had never felt so lost without her.

Aelin was a walking flame, burning wherever she went. And now that she had left, Rowan realized how used he had gotten to her presence, how much he loved her.

Much more than he had realized before.

Rhoe put an arm around his shoulders, taking Rowan away from the platform. Rowan was glad Rhoe was there as they walked home. If not, Rowan might have bumped into so many pedestrians, normal people just wanting to go home to their own lives, completely unaware of the girl who had left minutes ago in a train.

“She’ll come back.” Evalin, Aelin’s mom, said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And she’ll be pissed if you spend four years single and moping.” Aedion muttered, and Rowan scoffed.

“I know that too.”

When Rhoe and Evelin dropped him off at home, he went straight to his room. His fingers itched to call her, but they had agreed that for their break up to be effective, they had to distance themselves a little, at least in the beginning.

He just stared at his ceiling. And stared, and stared and stared.

He loved her so much, and missed her just the same. Rowan knew he was in love with Ace, but missing her made him realize just how much.

He had been quiet and sad for the next few days. A little bit better the next week.

And slowly, Rowan learned how to live without her.

He would go out, he would laugh and joke with his friends. He busted his ass off studying for the next four years, always thinking about the LSAT.

He went on a few dates. Dated a girl named Lyria for a few months, a girl named Remelle for a few weeks.

Even when his life was back at normal, when it had been years since Aelin had left, a part of him still held on to that love he had felt when they were younger. It was hidden in the deep of his mind, a dormant part of it. He would think of her from time to time, smile at their memories and even feel a pang of sadness, but it didn’t feel like it was going to consume him.

Rowan had never forgotten her, and she made sure of it. They didn’t call, not once in four years, and she had never come to visit. But to every city Aelin went, to every beautiful place she visited, she would sketch a small postcard and send it to him. Never with a message, no pictures of her or whatever she was working on. Just the sketches and the name of the place in the back.

A reminder. She hadn’t forgotten him either.

By now, Rowan had hundreds of sketches, all inside a box under his bed. He would sometimes look through them, seeing how her drawing was improving. He remembered that sculpting had always been her area of expertise, and to see her drawings become so flawless made his chest burst in pride. He would smile every time a new handmade postcard arrived, and would eagerly wait for the next one.

Rowan would have never forgotten Aelin, even if she disappeared for ten years and didn’t give him any news.

But he had to admit, he loved to know that she was thinking of him from time to time, too.

—————————

“Rowan Whitethorn, future lawyer.” Aedion smiled, clapping his best friend on his shoulder. “Sounds rather adult-y, doesn’t it?”

Rowan laughed, taking off his green cap. Today had been their graduation day, all his friends receiving their diplomas in different areas. Some of them were ready to go to work, like Lorcan and Vaughan. But he was going to law school now, the same way Fenrys and Aedon were going to med school.

“We are adults, Aedion.”

“Don’t you ever repeat those cursed words!” He said, and Rowan laughed again. “I have the soul of a dumb eighteen year old. Forever. End of story.”

“I’m sure Lysandra is delighted by the fact.” Lorcan said, and Rowan almost laughed at the vision of his friend. It was probably the first time Rowan had seen Lorcan in something that wasn’t black, and bright green and silver silk weren’t really his thing.

“Even if he acted like an adult, Lysandra would still be miserable.” Fenrys added, a smile on his lips as Aedion tried to smack him. Vaughan and Connall only shook their heads, laughing quietly.

“Ok, ok. Now the present for the grad.” Aedion said, and all of them turned to Rowan, almost scary smiles on their faces.

“We already gave out presents. And they were terrible, by the way.” Rowan said, confused. “Who the fuck needs a bright red silk underwear, Fenrys?”

Fenrys smile became more sarcastic as the others laughed. “I thought it would bring out the green in your eyes, Roro.”

“I don’t want any more presents from the five of you.” Rowan said, almost pleading.

All their smiles widened further, even Lorcan’s. Fenrys was almost hopping on his feet. Aedion was the one with the biggest smile, excitement almost pouring off of him.

“It’s not our present.” Aedion replied, and his blue eyes shifted for something over Rowan’s shoulder.

Rowan’s brows furrowed and he turned around.

The sight almost made him drop to his knees. There, standing in a plain spaghetti strap black top, tight dark jeans hugging every curve and black heels, was the girl who remained the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Thick golden blonde hair falling in waves until her waist, creamy white skin tanned from her years of travel, pinkish full lips pulled into a huge smile and turquoise and gold eyes gleaming with mirth.

Aelin winked at him, and Rowan’s mouth pulled into an equally big smile.

She held up her fingers, a handmade postcard with the word home in it between them. She flicked her wrist, showing the other side with a sketch of Orynth. “I thought it would be better if I gave this one in person.”

Rowan laughed with so much happiness as he walked back to Aelin.

And Rowan felt as if he had found himself in that instant.

Tags:

@abookishfreak @faerie-queen-fireheart @in-love-with-caramel-macchiato @jlinez @courtofjurdan @aelinfeyreeleven945tbln @ladywitchling @maastrash @morganofthewildfire @queen-of-glass @lexflame

#rowaelin #rowaelin fanfic #rowaelin fanfiction #rowaelin au #rowanaelin #rowan whitethorn #aelin ashryver galathynius #aedion ashryver #lysandra ennar #connall moonbeam #fenrys moonbeam #vaughan #tog #throne of glass #throne of glass fanfiction #throne of glass au #throne of glass fanfic #angsty #fluffy #writing #mardu writes

[lilnasxvevo]

My thing is definitely like. They say not to go to grad school unless it’s for something you’re passionate about. And like. I have six things that I’m like “okay I could stomach doing that for at least a few years” but nothing where I’m like “yeah I want to do this forever, totally worth going back to school and spending a lot of money to learn more about and get a master’s in.”

The only things I really really want to go back to school for are things where pretty much the only jobs I could take for it would be in academia, and it’s notoriously hard to get paid anything in academia these days. I really want to take more religious studies classes but the only end game there would be becoming a religious studies professor/scholar because I’m a frickin atheist who just thinks learning about this stuff is cool.

Otherwise it’s like:

-I’d really like to be a mycologist but the last time I scored higher than a C+ in any science class I’ve taken was literally 10 years ago, I’ve never been good at science classes and it would be an extraordinary learning curve to try to go into freaking biology for grad school

-I could get a master’s in history and become an archivist but that’s just something I think I could *tolerate* for the rest of my life, it’s not something I’m *passionate* about. I mean, chances are I’d get a job somewhere dumb and my job would be keeping a bunch of farmers’ diaries from crumbling into dust and assisting the kinds of people who want to read old farmers’ diaries. What even is that demographic, “people who write Dear America books”? Of course, another thing you can do with a master’s in history is become a historian. So I’d have that option as well, but see above to see why academia is an unappealing option.

-I could do library science, just because it seems like a logical choice. One of my best friends has a master’s in library science and another one of my best friends is currently pursuing one. I just don’t know if that’s what I really want.

-I’ve been thinking about marketing lately??? One of my true joys in life is telling people what’s cool about a thing that I like and the closest thing there is to a job that’s just that is marketing unless I want to try to become like, a book reviewer (can’t imagine it’s easy to earn a living doing that) or like, a literary agent (from what I can tell, NOT something you can just decide to become, I’m pretty sure you need connections and shit to be an agent). I mean like I COULD but it would take a long time doing other jobs first. Which wouldn’t be too too bad. Publishing interests me.

-I could just. Become a writer. Everyone who’s gotten a writing MFA that I’ve spoken to has been like “no yeah don’t get an MFA” so I just wouldn’t do that. I’d just. Make a commitment to being a published writer who writes and publishes. Ugh. Sounds hard.

-Paralegal or lawyer??? My current job involves scrolling through a lot of legal documents and court cases and I find it so interesting. The downside here being that I find it terribly depressing quite frequently and I’m a sensitive boi, and also I hate the criminal justice system. But there are lots of kinds of law besides criminal law.

[officialkendallroy]

hi !! ^_^ are u in a masters program for social work? im slowly getting my bachelors but my school doesnt have a social work program so im studying sociology and hoping to go to grad school after... if you arent too busy or anything i would really appreciate if u could tell me a it about what studying social work is like? <333

i am not in a masters program!! im hopefully gonna write my bachelors thesis next semester!! but ofc i can tell you about it <3 i do actually quite enjoy it a lot even though im so flodded with work rn and stressed out hihi. it's really interesting bc you get a peak into a lot of different work fields. like working with kids, with old people, mentally ill people, working in prison, working with lgbt people etc. and you learn a lot of things from psychological aspects of the work, to the law, to different work methods. at my uni you could always choose courses which interest you the most + the regular courses everyone had to take which i think is really cool bc i already know (or at least know a bit) in what field i want to work later on. it's like you learn the basics of social work and then you add on to that with what youre interested in. i have to say it's not the most complicated thing to study!! for me everything except law and psychology was pretty easy and like easy to understand and grasp. at my uni you have to do an internship over an entire semester. mine really really sucked and was bad and made me really sad etc. but a lot of my uni friends had really good experiences and want to work in that field they chose for their internship later on. the work load can get a bit much if youre lazy like me!! also i would not recommend studying social work if it's online. i feel really unprepared to actually get out there and like help people or get involved in peoples lives you know. ummm what else. you have to be certain that this really is the right work for you bc it does take an emotional toll on you and is really exhausting but not very rewarding (bad payment and not much recognition). also i feel like if my studying wouldve actually happened in the university and not just from home i definitely couldve told you so much more and different things. covid really made studying boring / second thought etc. but yeah i do enjoy studying social work and i do really like the variety of things i learn and get to know through this.

#i hope this helps #asks #anon

[polarisdelphi]

Answer the questions and tag 21 blogs you want to get to know better. Tagged by @sk-mumu

Thanks a lot for the tag! I'm feeling special ꒰´꒳`∗꒱

Nickname: Kah/Kaka (and polar bear/little polar bear - that's how my mom calls me ever since I was a kid, hence my blog name/art account)

Zodiac: Aries, ascending in Scorpio. I swear I'm nice when I want to

Height: 159cm 160cm

Last Movie I Watched: Avengers End Game. My sister made me watch ALL Marvel movies leading up to End Game 'cause I had never watched it, resulting in us watching movies together everyday for a month. It was worth it and I blame Loki the series, not the god

Last Thing I Googled: If Brazil accepts the jurisdiction of the Committee Against Torture for individual complaints and investigations - my post grad made me go crazy with studying/research this week

Favorite Musician: Muse, BTS and U2. My Holy Trinity of Music

Song Stuck in My Head: Nobody Does It Better, by Carly Simon. It's from the 70's and it was theme of the 007 movie 'The Spy Who Loved Me' - I love all the themes from 007 movies and this is one of my favourites!

Other Blogs: @polarisbibliotheque - I recently started this so I can go back to writing a little bit! I'm doing mostly DMC fanfiction for now, but more will come as inspiration strikes!

Blogs Following: Art related, DMC related, photography + culture (a lot on asian culture and history, like Vietnam, Japan, Korea, China), witchcraft in general, books + really old first edition collector books + libraries, rights related (human rights, activism, feminism, this kind of stuff)... I think that's it.

Amount of Sleep: 4 hours or less. I'm a mess and my sleep schedule is non existent. I've been trying to study Astral Travelling just so I can study/multitask while I sleep, like Doctor Strange

Lucky Number: 7 and 13 - I used to say I'm the unluckiest person on Earth, so I'd use 13 as a lucky number because its "jinx" energy would neutralize my unluckiness and turn into lucky vibes (you know, negative plus negative equals positive?). I've been doing it since I was 13, so far so good actually

What I am Wearing: Dark blue velvety-like sports pants and dark blue gap sweater. Everything I own is blue or black and I don't regret it

Dream Job: Oooh boy. When I was in high school I wanted so bad to work with music - anything really. But now, after Law School and such, my dream job would be working at the United Nations or some International Organization where I can actually help people in need with my knowledge

Dream Trip: So many. Hahaha but I guess Japan and Korea are on top of my list, especially Japan. I have no idea why, since I was very little I've always loved that country and always wanted to pay a visit I blame Sailor Moon. Other countries I have as huge top priorities are Romania, Hungary, Austria, Italy and Greece ^^

Favorite Food: Tea and biscuits/cookies (I'm an old soul). Also, I LOVE Brazilian barbecue. And pizza.

Play an Instrument: I play the piano for +15 years now (I guess...?) It's one of the very few things that puts me at peace and I love music with all my heart. I like playing songs by ear - currently I'm working on some BTS songs and Devil May Cry arrengements. Someday I shall finish the arrengement for Bury The Light, but I'm currently working on refining DMC3 Total Result. I might post here if you guys like it ^^

Also, I'm learning to play the guitar by myself, so it's taking a while.

Language: Brazilian Portuguese, English, an intermediate level of understanding in Spanish, very VERY basic Mandarin and currently teaching myself French

Favorite Song: Starlight, by Muse. It's the same since I was 14 and it remains unconquered.

Random Fact: I studied dance for +10 years and participated on competitions and such. When I was 12, I danced Can Can and I had a solo where I would hold my right leg up to my ear and spin around during two whole counts (two eights, as we'd say here). When I tell people about this, they doubt me and even after so many years, I can still do it!

This is one of the reasons why I like BTS so much: I watch their performances and I get it - the nervousness before it starts, the feeling before going on stage, performing while everyone's cheering... I miss it. And I like watching them do it because I loved it so much - the music and the dancing, I get it when they say they could do it until they die. I miss that sort of passion in my life.

I don't know too many people to tag, but you can do it if you want to! Feel free to mention me as the tagger so I can take a look ヽ(´▽｀；)/♪

#tag game #about me

[douchebagbrainwaves]

POST-RISK COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY

It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them. Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. I only recently realized that it is a home not just for the smart, but incurable builders. Whatever was going to study philosophy in college. But if you look, there are ways to decrease its effects. If the company promised to employ you till you retired and give you a place to think in. Why bother? In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can't show these to families while they're having dinner. Maybe, I suggested, he should buy some stock in this company. Even if you could get to work on what you like. And that is another area where undergrads have an edge. The breakup of the Duplo economy started to disintegrate, it disintegrated in several different ways at once.1

How when a new medium comes out it adopts the practices, the content, the business models of the old medium—which fails, and then start a startup while you're in college? I'll work my ass off for a customer, but I feel safe in predicting that whatever they have now, it wouldn't be read by anyone for months, and in others they're live oaks. Companies like Cisco are proud that everyone there has a cubicle, even the CEO.2 If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably has a few leaves stuck in the landing gear from those trees it barely cleared at the end of last year.3 The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own. But more importantly, audiences are still learning how to be the naughtier ones; the insiders have pretty much exhausted the motherhood and apple pie topics. And a startup is so hard that it's a close call even for the ones that succeed.4 We can imagine will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed. A poor student who could afford only rice was eating his rice while enjoying the delicious cooking smells coming from the food shop.

They were professionals working in fields like law, finance, and consulting. I don't like it.5 They produce new ideas; maybe the rest of the world was like you'd find in a children's book, and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a good job. I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of Eureka! Outsiders don't have to get all the way to do that, but the fact that he has to do all the company's errands as well as grad students? They've tried hard to make their offices less sterile than the usual cube farm. Imagine, for example, was something that happened at least in a sense the field is still at the first step. Why? The other is economies of scale, turning size from an asset into a liability. What do those users want? So which ones?

I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And though you can't see it, cosmopolitan San Francisco is 40 minutes to the north. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees.6 So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no try. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated.7 Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed suitable for a magazine, so I sat down and thought about what they have in common? Outsiders don't have to tell anyone you're doing philosophy. Ignorance can be useful when it's a counterweight to other forms of stupidity.

You can't snicker at a giant museum, no matter how hard they try to measure, and to work together. I ever read it? It's not hard to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, and since they were all aiming at the middle of the pond there are overlapping sets of ripples. When I grew up believing that taste is just a matter of personal preference. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated. Fortunately that future is not limited to the startup world. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.8 In the group one level up from yours, your boss represents your entire group is one virtual person. In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. All humans find faces engaging—practically by definition: face recognition is in our DNA. Even hackers can't tell.

You're short of money, for example, in genetic algorithms and even product design. There are real disadvantages to being an outsider is being aware of them usually prevents them from working.9 Class projects will inevitably solve fake problems. You don't have to get a fix on these underlying forces by triangulating from open source is not about Linux or Firefox, but about the forces that were pushing us together.10 If I were you I'd look for the next invading army. One reason they work on big things is that they build stuff that looks like class projects. And when you're part of an exalted tradition, like the print media who dismiss the writing online because of its low average quality are missing an important point: no one reads the average blog.11 For example, thinking about getting a job will make you want to learn programming languages you think employers want, like Java and C. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue growth. Most I find through aggregators like Google News or Slashdot or Delicious.

Notes

But he got there by another path.

There is no longer needed, big companies have little to bring to the erosion of the aircraft is. No.

Jones, A. We think of ourselves as investors, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power.

Why does society foul you? FreeBSD and stored their data in files. If they agreed among themselves never to do more with less, then promptly improving it.

To a 3 year old to get fossilized. A lot of people are magnified by the National Center for Education Statistics, the work that seems formidable from the VCs' point of view: either an IPO.

Did you know about this from personal experience than anyone, writes: I'd argue that the VCs should be deprived of their core values is Don't be evil, they tend to say that was basically useless, but this would be to write a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not a programmer would find it was one of the bizarre stuff. Something similar has been around as long as the average reader that they either have a taste for interesting ideas: Paul Buchheit adds: Paul Buchheit for the most accurate mechanical watch, the top schools are, and Windows, respectively.

You have to spend a lot cheaper than business school, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be employees, or can launch during YC. Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Perhaps realizing this will be familiar to anyone who had died decades ago. I have no idea what's happening till they measure their returns. I know randomly generated DNA would not know his name.

This just seems to pass so slowly for them. That's why there's a special title for actual partners. There may be the least experience creating it. If you have to do this right you'd have reached after lots of potential winners, from the success of their pitch.

03%. It is still possible, to the next round is high as well. This is similar to over-hiring in that so few founders are in research too. 66.

VCs. They shut down a few VC firms.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #defense #forces #print #example #projects #sup #call #YC #apple #way #motherhood #Windows #trees #gear #point #spending #things #lots #undergrads #Lisp #So #medium #algorithms #FreeBSD #counterweight

[palukoo]

tww teacher au for the ask game!

combining this with another ask from anon: tww academia au!! bc i was gonna make this college anyways bc most of them are too pretentious to work at a high school even if they are passionate about education

jed was the chair of the economics department for a really long time (including when some of the staff went to whatever made up school i'm having them be a part of) and would be like. kind of a polarizing figure on ratemyprofessors. his classes are generally engaging and you learn a lot, but the lecture is on externalities and he's been talking about national parks for the last twenty minutes. he also tends to run late, and his class isn't easy, but he has tons of office hours and writes great recommendations. he would generally teach like a freshman/intro course for fun (maybe intro to macro?) and then one or two advanced classes. for like, some structure, these days he's probably the president of the college/uni, but maybe he just. let's himself teach a random class every semester anyways, because he misses it. (if he occasionally hijacks the american studies or theology department, who is gonna stop him? usually its like. history of the global economy or something tho)

leo is probably like the provost or dean or whatever in charge of faculty or something. if he teaches, which he probably has at some point but idk if he still does, it's probably some foreign affairs class. like international security or something.

abbey is probably the chair of their pre-med program or like the director of their (science) research programs. there's probably someone calling it nepotism at some point, until everyone points out she's had this job since before jed was president, so. checkmate. she'll rotate between a few different classes, probably like. an anatomy at some point, but for some reason i really like the concept of her doing some molec cell or biochem (def more on the cellular side of things as opposed to ecology, and also less genetics, so. but maybe more public health). a lot of students are kind of afraid of her but tons of people apply to work in her lab, and she really loves her lab students so much.

cj could do like. media/publicity for the school, like that's a job she could easily have, but i kinda want them all to actually. teach, so she probably teaches some form of media studies/communication studies/journalism. students love her, because she's funny and smart and energetic in class, and compassionate about extensions and whatever. she takes her job super seriously, and wants to give everyone the best chance she can. she'll like, practice in her lecture hall ahead of time.

toby i can't decide on. you would think some form of writing or communications class, but i want to give him like. a bunch of classes cross listed as like sociology and political science and philosophy and american studies. like he'll teach like political ethics, or classes about civil rights, or literature about specific political movements. he assigns like no tests and all papers and grades them like. harshly, but the students who really come in and try, he loves and will work with. realistically he should probably be chair of a department but idk which one.

josh teaches a bunch of political classes and his students all make fun of him, thank you. like he'll teach classes on legislative processes, and he's like not a bad professor and clearly knows what he's talking about, but he also comes in with coffee stains and messy hair and his chair breaks weekly and he and his projector are in the middle of an ongoing war that they all know he isn't winning. he (like cj) really wants his students to like him, and they mostly do. his lectures can also get a little tangenty, but that's okay. he should also probably head a department, i guess political science, but rip to all those other profs.

donna ta-ed for josh at some point when he was still really new at it, and was probably going to do political science but also maybe english, who knows, in grad school, but ended up spending a summer working in the admissions office and actually really loved it, so she did admissions for a while until she got too depressed rejecting students, and now she does some form of academic counselling and everyone loves her, and she absolutely will fight professors on behalf of students

sam also does some niche cross listed humanities classes, like he'll do literature & law, or american lit and culture. he does a ton of pre law advising also!

amy! amy is probably chair of the gender/sexuality/women's studies department bc i say so. she mostly teaches more gov focused classes, though, like women and the law, or women in leadership, or sexuality in america. she's also kind of harsh on grading, but she's super good at helping students make connections for their careers and shit.

joey teaches polling/stats and political polling classes thank you.

half of them are known for writing those papers that are clearly part of a huge academic disagreement where they're just criticizing other people's papers. usually at different schools, but not always. interdepartmental/humanities prof gatherings are fun!

#tww #asks #answered #claudiasjeancregg #anonymous #there's other characters and other thoughts to be had but gsws amy is everything to me #anyways i looked through my schools entire course catalogue for this and it shows. made me realize how many classes i wanna take but cant #also my school doesnt call it political science and i kept having to change it here #but yeah! i like the thought of charlie as jeds ta also but idk how to make that work if jed is the president #hmmm maybe santos is the provost. or becomes pres to led jed go back to teaching more full time? will and elsie both teach writing classes #kate does foreign policy. ainsley maybe also does pre law stuff or if they have a law school works there #i realize they could also have a med school that abbey could run lol #none of the bartlet daughters go to this school much to jeds dismay #lord marbury is an adjunct prof who no one can stand #ill stop now #also i didnt do character tags bc too many #oh wait maybe annabeth doesnt teach and actually does university comms and as part of like a marketting campaign is trying to do cool #profiles on some of the profs and they mostly cant stand it but yk #ANDY how did i not do andy!! andy would. also teach some kind of foreign affairs/diplomacy thing or like legislative processes. maybe #josh can take a class on the executive instead or something. ugh or andy could do something with their hypothetical law school #she's on like ethics judicial and foreign affairs in canon iirc so. idk! #cj probably also had some overlap and does like women in the media at some point just for fun

[thinking-in-symbols]

Quinquennial Life Assessment

So, it’s been a few years.  When I was 19 I posted a sort of “roadmap” for the evolution of my life on this blog.  Today I thought I’d revisit that.  I want to take a look back and see what progress I’ve made, and then in a separate post I want to turn to the future, think about how my vision for it has changed, and consider how I can reincorporate these goals into that vision.

This is the list of things I wanted to get done in varying time frames.  I’ve crossed off the things I’ve done to get a sense of my progress:

1 year:

At 19, my hopes were to accomplish the following things by age 20:

- Joined, and consistently participated in, at least 2 campus organizations that suit my interests, at least 1 of which should be competitive in nature - well, I joined the ISO and KVRX, my college radio station!  Neither of those were competitive, but in retrospect I don’t really care about that :-)

- Made concrete plans to study abroad - Nope, unfortunately I never did this.  I’m not quite sure I regret that, all things considered - I traded that experience for other things.  I did make plans to spend a few months abroad of my own accord, and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling global pandemic.  But as it stands I haven’t done this.

- Learned C++ and python to proficiency - Hm.  “Proficient” is a relative term.  But I think I have a tendency to downplay my skills, so in the interest of counteracting that I’m going to count myself as “proficient” in these languages.  I think that’s fair.

- Gone on at least a several day road trip with at least 1 friend - I’ve gone on several trips with @meeshbug​, my very lovely girlfriend and best friend in the world :-)

- Decided on a concentration beyond the extremely vague umbrella of “computer science” - Unfortunately as far as my education is concerned I never really did this.  If anything my interests have *broadened* rather than becoming more focused.  More on this later...

- Made meaningful, ongoing contributions to an open-source project - You know what?  I’ve published the source of everything I’ve ever made, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can make stuff that’s not trivial.  So I’m giving myself credit for this one.

- Learned to cook enough meals to eat in most days and not get sick of my own food - I wish.  I’ve learned to cook a fair amount of stuff but I still get way too depressed and lethargic to apply that consistently.  Whether I consider myself to have achieved this honestly depends on the month.

- Learned to keep my living area clean - I’m much better at this than I was at 19, but at 19 I could barely clear a path to walk across my room.  So there’s more work to do.  More on these last two later.

- Gotten a pet - Meesh and I have a dog named Courage (after the dog of cowardly fame) and a cat named Jax!

2 years:

- Independently written a piece of software to completion and deployed it publicly - I’ve always pretty bad at actually seeing projects through to completion, but I do have a few full, independent projects under my belt at this point.  I’ve built a simple game engine, a pathtracer, plugins for games I like, and some other stuff.

- purchased and begun regularly using some basic amateur radio equipment - Ah man.  I got my license but I still haven’t gotten any equipment.  I guess I have to get on that...

- purchased and begun experimenting with some basic music recording equipment - This one I’ve done, but I haven’t done as much experimenting as I’d like.

- hosted a party - I did this for my 21st birthday and it’s one of my favorite memories!  Honestly this was probably the last time I had all my really close friends in one place.  I’m actually getting kind of emotional about that.

- done some kind of hallucinogen - I have now done this.  I definitely did get something out of it, albeit not what I expected.  This is something I actually only did pretty recently and it’s still having a pretty profound effect.  Maybe I’ll write a separate post about this.

- Gone camping with friends - Despite my best efforts, this hasn’t happened yet.  Pretty fucked up.

3 years:

- learned to play another instrument besides the piano (guitar?) - I don’t feel comfortable crossing this one off quite yet, but I went ahead and bought myself some guitar equipment and have been messing around with it lately :-) I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and pay for lessons if I’m serious about this, which I am.

- Written and recorded a song - Damn, I can’t believe it’s been 5 years and I haven’t even done this.

- Met a group of people I can play music with - nope

- Owned a leather jacket.  I can’t believe I’ve still never even owned a leather jacket - I’ve done this and wore it frankly too much.  Kinda cringe.

- Worked as a professional software developer - Yep!  Worked as a software developer for a retail company for a couple years.  I’m actually not working as a software developer right now, though; I’m working in a sort of adjacent position.  More on this later.

- Participated in research related to my field - That’s pretty ambitious.  Not sure I’ll ever do this, unfortunately.  But we’ll see.

- Been to a film festival - Oh shit, I totally forgot about having written this.  That’s a cool idea.  I should do this, it’s not like it’s hard (well, at least in principle.  I guess covid kind of changes the situation).

- Gotten a dog - Courage is one of those, I think, although he might also be part rat.

- collected 50 records - Lol, my dumb ass really thought I was going to buy $1,000 worth of records on college money.  No, I haven’t done this, but I’m on my way there.

- Purchased a desktop computer - Well, my dad gave me his old desktop.  That’s not really a purchase but I think it counts.

5 years:

- Begun accepting freelance development gigs - haven’t gotten here yet and I’m not totally sure this is a direction I want to go in my career.  Freelancing has its own stressors as I’ve come to learn from others.  No career path is sunshine and roses and I’m trying to internalize this fact.

- Participated in a student film - Nope.  I don’t even know why I wrote this down to be honest.

- Gotten laid by solving a 5x5 Rubik’s Cube in front of a girl because surely that’s gonna have to work on someone eventually, otherwise I wasted a lot of time - These are getting weird.  Surely I didn’t really expect this to happen, right?  Well, either way I now have a long-term girlfriend, so I don’t - wait, Meesh has seen me solve a Rubik’s cube and she saw it before we started dating.  So actually I’m going to give myself credit for it.  I’m the one who makes the rules here.

- Fleshed out my political opinions - Yes, I now know everything about politics and can answer 100% of questions on political issues.  Just kidding.  But I know where I stand.

- Participated in a protest or some other kind of political event - Done!  Went to a few protests as part of the ISO, participated in lots of their events, and attended some protests with friends as well.

- Studied abroad - Nope :-/

- Learned a language other than Spanish - I took a semester of French!  But I don’t quite want to give myself credit for this one because I really would like to learn a different language to something resembling fluency.

- Run a marathon - Lmao.  I am in much worse shape now than I was when I wrote this post, and even at that time I could probably do like 7 miles if I really pushed myself.  How sad.

- Gone hiking outside of texas - This is weird because I’d literally already done this when I wrote this post.  But I’ve done it more since then, so hey!

- Been out of the country with a friend - This I had also already done.  I guess the point is to have done it without “adult supervision” or whatever.  I haven’t done this since writing this list so I guess I have to leave it uncrossed.

10 years:

- Lived with a girl for an extended period of time - Meesh 🥰

- Spent at least 6 months living on the road in an RV, preferably with a dog and a girl - God, I am so close to being able to do this.  I don’t want it to be an RV anymore - those things are expensive.  But a van?  Still pricey, but doable, especially if I’m willing to sacrifice some comfort.  This has actually been front-of-mind for a while.  I’ll let you know when I get the balls to pull the trigger.

- Started making Real Money - Well, yep, I have gotten to that point.  I do have other thoughts on this, though.  Money is weird, man.

- Lived in a long-term living space outside of Texas (i.e. not including RV time) - How long is long-term?  Three months?  If so, I’ve done this by living in Boston with Meesh for a few months after she went there for law school.  However, I anticipate staying there much longer in the near future, so I’ll wait on this crossing this one off.

- Written a book about something, idk - Not yet.  I’m halfway to the deadline on this one and I have some ideas, but ideas aren’t worth all that much, especially to me, who rarely sees them through.  We’ll see where this goes.  It’s not exactly a priority and historically I struggle to get even my priorities done.  It might make more sense to replace this with recording a concept or narrative album, for which I also have ideas that I happen to take more seriously.

- Learned to solve a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube - nope

- Gotten laid by solving a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube - nope

- Lived in an apartment where I pay all the rent - Yes!  :-))) We love independence

- Earned an advanced degree (this one’s iffy) - This hasn’t happened, and whether it will ever happen is something I’ve been thinking a lot about.  I sort of decided half-way through college that I would be totally burned out on school by the time I graduated.  But in retrospect it takes way less time to burn out on work than it does to burn out on school, and grad degrees are a different kind of thing.  So it’s worth revisiting.’

- Given a best man speech (Sam, this means you have to get married within the next 10 years.  Good luck out there.) - Holy shit, Sam, you maniac, you actually did it!  Sam got married back in 2019 and I gave his best man speech! It’s another one of my favorite memories :-) 

- Gone on a cruise with someone I’m dating - Hmm, not yet.  I’ve gone on cool trips, but none on a boat.  Maybe that’s something to aim for after the pandemic passes :-)

Retrospective:

1yr: Completed: 5/9

More than half isn’t bad!  I’m not gonna worry too much about whether I got these things done within their assigned “time-frame”.  I’m a procrastinator in my heart and I don’t see any reason to put that kind of pressure on myself.  The point is, they got done.  That’s enough for me.

The things I did best in in this category were academic things, and things to do with relationships.  I’m proud of the academic achievements, I really feel like doing them has increased my belief in myself and my sense that I’m good at the thing I’ve spent the last four years studying.  And of course, I am so happy to be in a loving, fulfilling relationship that brings so many good things into my life.  I almost feel like the things I accomplished sort of fell into my lap - of course I’m gonna do programming stuff as a programming student, and getting pets / going on road trips are things I did as a result of my relationship with Meesh.  I don’t say that to downplay the accomplishments, but I do think it’s worth noting.

The things I haven’t done are more to do with personal development, which is disappointing.  I would like to be able to say, 5 years down the road, that I’ve done the personal development I expected to do in just a single year, but maybe that’s a lot to expect.  These are problems I’ve dealt with my whole life.  I think what this means is that I can’t expect everything to fall into my lap.  Those things are going to take real concerted effort to change.  I’m not quite sure how to go about that, though.

2yrs: Completed: 4/6

Two-thirds!  Even better!

Lots of these are one-time accomplishments, not so much long-term commitments to personal development.  The good news is, I did them, and I think those resulted in some development in their own right :-)

Again, though, the things I didn’t do so well are the things that require long-term, concerted effort.  For instance, while I crossed off the one about experimenting with music, it’s really only the initial investment that I’ve really done at this point.  It remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to follow through on the commitment to actually experiment and learn.

3yrs: Completed: 4/10

This category also follows the same pattern I’ve noticed with the last two.  The other thing I’m noticing is that so, so much of my effort over the past few years has been going towards developing a very particular skill: programming / computer science.  Music and art are so important to me, but I’ve done very little real development in those areas.  I mean, I’ve done some.  But not as much as I would have hoped for half a decade.

5yrs: Completed: 4/10

This is getting a little more fun because less of my goals have to do explicitly with my degree.  I’m starting to think beyond college, which is good, because the stage of life I’m in right now requires me to start thinking about the kind of life I want to build now that I’m done with school.  Also, I’m at the deadline for this one right now!  So this is a particularly interesting category because it really shows where I thought I’d be by this time.

The goals I accomplished in this timeframe are, again, mostly things I’ve done through my relationship, but politics also feature pretty prominently on this part of the list.  I spent a lot of time reading and researching political issues during college and really did look for ways to participate.  I honestly made politics a pretty big part of my identity over the last 5 years, and I think it will stay that way forever, but I’ve gotten to the point where I think I need to devote less of my mental energy to knowing more.  I know what I need to know.  It’s time to think about other things.

10yrs: Completed: 4/11 (and counting!)

There’s some career stuff in this section that I’ve been able to do, which is good news.  I’ve always been scared about entering the working world.  All things told, it’s gone more smoothly than it could have.  But I also have lots of lingering doubts about what I want to do in the long term.  So one of the most pressing goals I should aim for is to resolve those doubts.

Ultimately, I have a lot of time left, and I’m not even done with this time frame, so I’m not gonna spend much time dissecting the things I haven’t done.  What I’ll do instead is say that while I didn’t do everything on this list, I feel proud of the things I have accomplished.  I said when I first wrote this list that it’s sometimes hard for me to feel that my life is moving in any particular direction, and I’m still feeling like that five years later, to be honest.  But looking back on these things has helped me see that I actually am making progress in my life.  Not in all the ways I want to, but that’s OK.  There’s still time.

In the next couple days I want to come back to this and reorganize this list into an updated set of goals, for the same time frames.  Maybe that will help me think through exactly what it is I want out of the next five-ten years, with the benefit of having analyzed the things that I did and didn’t do well over the previous five.