i had an amusing conversation with a stranger earlier today. i was waiting for my documents to be signed and he was about to enroll his nephew into my school, he was about middle aged and he looked well off. he sat next to me and asked if i was enrolling here too, i told him i just graduated and am preparing for university. we spoke for a while about universities and majors. i told him i'm taking psychology and he said it's a good choice and a relatively safe one, considering the rise of ai, which i disagree with, but i digress. he said other majors, even some like architecture and especially design, will face a lot of difficulties landing jobs. however, he said, for me, even if the hr/admin job prospect doesn't work out, when my peers are stressed from trying to find jobs and being unemployed, they will probably need a psychologist! the degree will be of use either way.
love how much attention this post is getting i knew the gay people in my phone would understand me. btw here's the picture that inspired me to make this post in the first place:
i used to hate it whenever i do something in front of someone and they tell me that i've been doing it 'wrong' before teaching me the 'right way' to do it ... when i've been doing it just fine for the last couple years, but, well, maybe sometimes i've just been too stubborn to admit that the 'right way' is, more often than not, more efficient and effective.
however, i do think it's unfair for people to completely deem all the other ways 'wrong,' especially when paired with a patronizing undertone. it makes me feel kind of unappreciated when people don't acknowledge the effort i've put into something, since i had to figure everything out myself. even if the process was unorthodox, the end result was the same and i think that's a success nonetheless.
one of my juniors just texted me saying she really wanted to get into psychology in my uni too but she wasn't sure if she could and that when she saw that i got in, she immediately felt eager to study. when she implied that the goal wasn't as far as she thought, i nearly cried. genuinely overjoyed to inspire my juniors to achieve what i also thought to be impossible for me
i asked how much she's prepared and she said she didn't know where to start and i just saw myself in her so i immediately shared some videos and tips i found helpful and some tryouts from a well known tutoring institution. when i was in her place, i was lost and wasn't sure who to reach out to when i didn't know what to do. however, after some figuring-things-out-myself, a lot of my (also confused) friends came along and we ended up learning together. i'm glad i had them, so to pay it forward, i've decided to help my juniors how i wanted to be helped
extremely drained after reading the amount of documents i need to prepare but i'd rather be drained re-registering into uni and finding a boarding house 500 kilometers away from home than figuring out how to pay off over $5825 worth of enterance fees and tuition ... which might not sound like much but considering the rupiah's plunging currency value (it would've been $7500, more or less, a couple years back (which, i know, is still little compared to the tuition fees in american universities)) and the fact that indonesians are so severely underpaid and exploited ... it's a lot.
right now i'm hoping to get the lowest tuition fee (around $224 for eight semesters) so i can raise my housing budget and get one with better facilities -- or better yet, pass the kipk selection so i won't need to pay a penny for tuition and would only have to worry for housing, utilities, food and transportation!
been feeling really fatigued and dizzy these couple days and found out my blood pressure is really low when i got checked up for uni ... how do u fix this
trivial thing to mention but i had a pretty nice conversation with my ex today. i'm glad we can put all our tumultuous history aside and still speak to each other how old friends would. i really do care for him, platonically, and i wish all the best to come his way
i genuinely can't fathom how much of a miracle it is for me to pass my college enterance exams. it went so badly that i wasn't expecting much but i *was* expecting at least getting into my third or fourth uni choice. so blessed to get into my first. i was preparing myself to make more plans if i hadn't gotten this one. God is so incredibly good with all his miracles
rereading east of eden!!! i just finished part one and i feel like my understanding of the book has significantly increased since last time (i've read the first part up to three times, i think).
prior to my first read, a couple months ago, i looked up reviews on tiktok and a specific one stuck with me. a reader said she didn't enjoy the book because it 'oversimplified good and bad,' but i think it's pretty shallow to say adam is portrayed to be good without fault and cathy is portrayed as a heartless monster, because it's so much more complicated than that.
adam, in hebrew, means man or humanity. in the book, he's often portrayed to be good and exemplary. he helps people in need, his ethics and values resonate with (what he, what we, believe as) good and things happen in a way that makes him look like a hero, but if you really focus on the details, he projects what he believes to everyone around him and he only believes what he wants. the way he only sees the good in everything makes him look naive and he actually acts cowardly more often than not. everyone wants good things to happen, nobody wants misfortunes, but life doesn't always go our way.
here's where cathy comes in. i think, in genesis, she would be the forbidden fruit. she doesn't cause people to sin, the choice has always been there, she just reveals that everyone has the capability to sin, but it's up to them to fall into temptation or not. her character is pretty complicated. cyrus once said to be a soldier once must be stripped off all their distinguishable features so they look, act and talk the same. in that sense, cathy's deviation from 'goodness' is so starking that she's portrayed as a monster. her refusal to conform to adam might also be parallel to the rise of feminism during the time this book was written because at that point in history, women had already begun advocating for equality and criticizing the patriarchal system of society. she symbolizes defiance, she's nonconformity. cathy is a monster because she distresses people by making them realize there is difference and evil in the world. charles warned adam that cathy, the forbidden fruit, will ruin his life and i firmly believe this is because she will make him realize that not everything is good. she will open his eyes to evil. the kinship charles and cathy feel towards each other is born from the acknowledgement that evil exists in the world.
one thing i really love about this book is steinbeck's analogy between stones and hardship and how the first three main characters react to them. adam wants to get away from the ranch to somewhere where 'stones' don't exist. he searches and explores and is willing to go hundreds of different ways, just to avoid the stones. that's cowardice. though, in the end, it does work out for him, he can't help but be completely blind to the truth, even when it's right in front of him.
cathy, unlike adam, faces the stones, but she has someone else do the dirty work for her. she keeps her hands clean from hardship, and that's why, throughout the book, they mention her hands a lot. in a conversation between liza and samuel, liza asks, "her hands, samuel, her hands—what was she doing with her hands?" to which samuel replies, "nothing i guess." cathy makes someone else take the fall for her and the pain she eventually had to endure in her hand is her punishment for it.
then, (one of) my favorite character(s), charles. in the good vs bad trope, people point him out as the 'purely evil' brother, but i disagree. unlike adam and cathy, charles struggles through the stones, but he's still susceptible to sin. it's ironic how charles tries to have control over every aspect of his life by maintaining a strict routine and refusing change but, ultimately, his inability to control himself in the face of sin is what leads to his downfall. the scar and the judgement that comes with it is the price charles has to pay for falling into temptation.
kaledo-art
jbbartram-illu
annaxmalina
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
stormborns
