Hello and welcome to tired & petty bitch academia.
I smoke, I am noncommittal, I spend all my inheritance on coffee, and I scam men into paying for me to go on trips to Europe. Amy Dunne did nothing wrong.
I just love this time of year. It’s still the beautiful holiday season with renewed fervour, a clean house with new gifts, reuniting with friends I havent seen in a month, and the exhale of not having to see your relatives for another year (unless they check out without paying before then, one can dream).
To do
Set 2026 Goals (so far, a few: Read 50 books, graduate, accept a masters program offer)
Make a vision board for 2026
Check when ballet classes start
Set meeting with academic advisor
Update my calendar with meeting times
Get back to work! (Semester 1 projects wrapping up, dissertations, reading, new class reading dropping soon, volunteer work amping up)
Just because I’m British doesn’t mean I have to like it.
A somewhat academic list to keep me sane from the perils of the uneducated, the fascist, and the cream before jam lot.
Hobbies
Take care of temperamental plants, or beautiful ones you always save to Pinterest boards. Learn everything there is to know about them.
Learn how to make the perfect matcha, coffee, or even hot chocolate
kill one man every 6-8 days
Start a bee & butterfly garden
Collect the physical instead of digital. Books, music, photos, they're meant to be held and felt and well-loved
Study
Read British woman writers, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Brontë Sisters, and Daphne du Maurier.
And of course, British woman poets: Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf (or at least, familiarise yourself with them)
Homosexual history of the royals and politicians. Tell your grandparents about it over dinner.
Learn about lexical gaps in the English language
Scream at the portraits of Charles and Camilla
Study Irish history and literature, The Book of Kells, The Atlas of the Irish Revolution, and The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849. Scream at royal portraits again.
Activites
Only patronise local coffee shops, pubs, & restaurants
Visit important landmarks, Downing Street, Shakespeare's home, Shibden Hall, Trafalgar Square (home to the first Pride rally and women's suffrage marches), etc...
Ancient Greece has been important to queer women’s culture for centuries, particularly all-female communities such as Amazons, and Maenads, as well as the poet Sappho of Lesbos.
Pitt Rivers Museum
The labrys, also known as the double-edged axe originated in the archaeological contexts of Crete. The Minoan civilisation in Crete was a largely matriarchal society, and labrys was one symbol of the Minoan Goddesses and religion. The symbol represents the female labia and also a butterfly. A ceremonial symbol in the Minoan religion had a different purpose among the Amazons.
Charlotte Museum
Labrys Flag – One of the first lesbian flags to enter popular culture, this was designed in 1999 by gay graphic designer Sean Campbell. Although it was designed by a man, it combined symbols that has already been in use by lesbians for decades.
Having been designed in 1999, this flag is one of the oldest flags used to represent the lesbian community, with the Labrys, Black Triangle and violet background already being enduring and recognisable symbols for the lesbian community before the flag's conception.
Northants Lesbian Society
The Labrys has a tumultuous history. Its recent adoption by bigotry does not erase thousands of years of history. Reclamation is individualistic, up to lesbians and lesbians alone. I will eternally be on the side of never letting prejudice commandeer our history. They are the ones who should be embarrassed to use our imagery.
J'ai passé mon examen de français aujourd'hui. Mon prof a dit que je m’en suis "très bien sortie"!
Two more projects to go, and I'm finished for the year.
Except for my two dissertation proposals. And my multiple volunteering projects. And research. And the goals I set for myself that no one knows about but I will break down if I don't complete on an arbitrary timeline. Okay so maybe not.
“She does not confine herself to that sort of honest flirtation which satisfies most people, but aspires to the more delicious gratification of making a whole family miserable.”
I've been terribly burnt out. I feel like lesbianism is further entrenched in me the less tethered it gets to society, civil rights, politicians, so on. I'm sore from the damn rainbow flagpoles in my foramina. I digress, onto the descent into academic madness.
Academic
Study the Passé Composé
Organise a French study date
Review French oral exam study guide
Settle on a theme for my dissertations (gay history, duh.)
Double check all my due dates (2 projects, 1 report)
