Me In A Nutshell

Name is Alana. I am me, no one else. 

[booksncoffee119]

Watch "STANDOFF IS GREAT! First look at NEW Black Ops Cold War map STANDOFF GAMEPLAY!" on YouTube

You know you wanna like and subscribe... a genuine legend! Anything helps! 💚💚

[luminous-studiess]

i post my study space every year because it changes drastically but for now this is my basic 2020 setup: a window near my desk, some semblance of organization, and always, always some coffee.

[scoobeedoo]

The curse of aesthetic...

[myhoneststudyblr]

my masterpost | my studygram | ask me anything

[click images for high quality]

[transcript under the cut]

Other advice posts that may be of interest:

How To Study When You Really Don’t Want To

Active Revision Techniques

How To Do Uni Readings

How to Revise BIG Subjects

Keep reading

[booksncoffee119]

A little sneak peek for my new stream! See you tomorrow 💚🖤💚🖤 #gaming #streamlabs #obs #xboxone #newstream #cod #codcoldwar https://www.instagram.com/p/CL0kEHUhX-R/?igshid=17tzm5ipuj69t

[chewbacca]

Matilda (1996), dir. Danny DeVito

[ginger-vevo]

hold up Danny DeVito directed the most influential film of my childhood?

[revenant666]

Not only directed it but starred in it, took care of Mara Wilson (Matilda) while her mother was in hospital with cancer and even managed to get an advanced copy of the movie for her to watch before she succumbed to her illness. The man is a treasure.

[randomslasher]

The best story I’ve heard about the production of Matilda was: 

The scene where Matilda was dancing around her living room making things fly around to the song “Little Bitty Pretty One” was very nerve-wracking for Mara. She told Danny that she was anxious to do the scene, and he said, “You know why? Because you’re the only one dancing! We just have to have everyone else dance too! Then it won’t be scary!” 

So everyone–the crew, the rest of the cast, the people at the craft services table, everyone–danced along with the song, at Danny’s insistence. Apparently the only one who wasn’t doing the full on dance was the camera man, who just did a foot shuffle so the camera wouldn’t jiggle. 

If that’s not the sweetest thing ever I don’t know what is. 

[nonenosome]

I’ve always loved this movie and these stories just make it better.

[biblichorr]

to whoever is reading this:

i wish you restful nights, productive mornings, sunshine, smiles from strangers, happy surprises, the fulfillment of your dreams and wishes, good grades, clear skin, great memories, the kind of happiness that fills all the little cracks in your heart and soul and heals all of your wounds, love, the resolution of your problems, that your fears evaporate like rain on a hot summer day, peace, and everything good in this world✨

[scholasticbabe]

10 Life changing self help books that ALL college students should read. These books cover everything from personal finance to building better habits… | All colleges

Jan 12, 2020 - 10 Life changing self help books that ALL college students should read. These books cover everything from personal finance to building better habits #college #books #list #reading #collegeblog #girlboss #richdadpoordad #5lovelanguages

[ecostudier]

Study Break Ideas

It can be tempting to take a study break by starting to scroll on social media and start switching between apps, but I’ve found that doing this can make me less focused and less motivated on the task I should be doing

Instead of picking up your phone, here are some better study break activities that you can do within 5-20 minutes:

take a short walk & fill up your water bottle

eat a healthy snack

meditate for a few minutes to calm down if frustrated with the material

drink coffee/tea/water to sharpen your mind

clean up or organize your workspace - sometimes a cluttered mind can be caused by a cluttered desk

take a power nap or rest your eyes for a bit to relax (set alarm for 20 minutes so you don’t go into deep sleep)

stretch your neck and back: looking down at a screen can start to really hurt after a while and you may not realize it’s the reason you’re tired

do some deep breathing

go outside for a short period if possible to spend time with nature

do a short exercise routine if you’re feeling like you want to get up and go do something else

The important thing to remember while taking breaks is to not start scrolling on social media, start texting someone, or talking to someone irl if you want to stay focused on your work. Be mindful about your breaks and if you notice you tend to be less focused or unmotivated after doing something during a study break, try to break that habit.

[pagtuon]

I’m nearing the end of high school, and I thought it’d be useful to share a step-by-step guide on how I’ve studied for the past few years.

Some disclaimers/clarifications

This doesn’t completely apply to Math-heavy subjects; I’ll write something about that soon, though!

Don’t take everything here as #Gospel Truth. At most, these are suggestions. Compare my framework to yours, and see how you can stitch mine up to improve yours.

Some tips:

AVOID MAKING A STUDY TIMETABLE AHEAD OF TIME. I cannot stress this enough. Decide for yourself on the day which lessons you’re going to focus on. Your past self cannot predict how good your future comprehension will be of certain lessons. Only your present self will. Watch Ali Abdaal’s video for a far more articulate argument.

REREADING YOUR NOTES TO MEMORIZE IS INEFFICIENT. Test. Yourself. Make flashcards. Teach someone else your lessons. Make a brain dump. Challenge your brain to vomit out the lesson instead of passively ingesting your notes.

CLEAR NOTES > PRETTY NOTES.

The rest of the process is under the cut!

Keep reading

[dustyn0vels]

This is by far my favourite thing I've seen for this community. I feel so much pressure to read certain books that I haven't got the money to buy and I feel wrong talking about the ones I am reading. This community is great, and I know we all want to be pretentious and snobby, but let's use that for aesthetic purposes and not to put others down.

(Btw ironically enough I found this text post on Instagram, not Tumblr and now I'm reposting it to Tumblr because idk how to find the original)

The original creators: @read-and-be-merry @iammewhooaryou @narukoibito

[werelivingarts-deactivated20230]

Choose your academia!

[seraphic-diaries]

13.4.20

Y’all know I only post original content on here unless I feel like it’s important to share. Take it in ✨

[my-aesthetic-vibes]

I want to live there

[neurosciencestuff]

Selective amnesia: how rats and humans are able to actively forget distracting memories

Our ability to selectively forget distracting memories is shared with other mammals, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge. The discovery that rats and humans share a common active forgetting ability – and in similar brain regions – suggests that the capacity to forget plays a vital role in adapting mammalian species to their environments, and that its evolution may date back at least to the time of our common ancestor.

The human brain is estimated to include some 86 billion neurons (or nerve cells) and as many as 150 trillion synaptic connections, making it a powerful machine for processing and storing memories. We need to retrieve these memories to help us carry out our daily tasks, whether remembering where we left the car in the supermarket car park or recalling the name of someone we meet in the street. But the sheer scale of the experiences people could store in memory over our lives creates the risk of being overwhelmed with information. When we come out of the supermarket and think about where we left the car, for example, we only need to recall where we parked the car today, rather than being distracted by recalling every single time we came to do our shopping.

Previous work by Professor Michael Anderson at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, showed that humans possess the ability to actively forget distracting memories, and that retrieval plays a crucial role in this process. His group has shown how intentional recall of a past memory is more than simply reawakening it; it actually leads us to forget other competing experiences that interfere with retrieval of the memory we seek.  

“Quite simply, the very act of remembering is a major reason why we forget, shaping our memory according to how it is used,” says Professor Anderson.

“People are used to thinking of forgetting as something passive. Our research reveals that people are more engaged than they realise in actively shaping what they remember of their lives. The idea that the very act of remembering can cause forgetting is surprising and could tell us more about people’s capacity for selective amnesia.”

While this process improves the efficiency of memory, it can sometimes lead to problems. If the police interview a witness to a crime, for example, their repeated questioning about selected details might lead the witness to forget information that could later prove important.

Although the ability to actively forget has been seen in humans, it is unclear whether it occurs in other species. Could this ability be unique to our species, or at least to more intelligent mammals such as monkeys and great apes?

In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, Professor Anderson together with Pedro Bekinschtein and Noelia Weisstaub of Universidad Favaloro in Argentina, has shown that the ability to actively forget is not a peculiarly human characteristic: rats, too, share our capacity for selective forgetting and use a very similar brain mechanism, suggesting this is an ability shared among mammals.

To demonstrate this, the researchers devised an ingeniously simple task based on rats’ innate sense of curiosity: when put into an environment, rats actively explore to learn more about it. When exploring an environment, rats form memories of any new objects they find and investigate.

Building on this simple observation, the researchers allowed rats to explore two previously-unseen objects (A and B) in an open arena – the objects included a ball, a cup, small toys, or a soup can.  Rats first got to explore object A for five minutes, and then were removed from the arena; they were then placed back in the arena 20 minutes later with object B, which they also explored for five minutes.

To see whether rats showed retrieval-induced forgetting, like humans, rats next performed “retrieval practice” on one of the two objects (e.g. A) to see how this affected their later memory for the competitor object (B). During this retrieval practice phase, the researchers repeatedly placed the rat in the arena with the object they wanted the rat to remember (e.g. A), together with another object never seen in the context of the arena. Rats instinctively prefer exploring novel objects, and so on these “retrieval practice” trials, the rats clearly preferred to explore the new objects, implying that they indeed had remembered A and saw it as “old news”.  

To find out how repeatedly retrieving A affected rats’ later memory for B, in a final phase conducted 30 minutes later, the researchers placed the rat into the arena with B and an entirely new object.   Strikingly, on this final test, the rats explored both B and the new object equally – by selectively remembering their experience with A over and over, rats had actively trained themselves to forget B.

In contrast, in control conditions in which the researchers skipped the retrieval practice phase and replaced it with an equal amount of relaxing time in the rats’ home cage, or an alternative memory storage task not involving retrieval, rats showed excellent memory for B.

Professor Anderson’s team then identified an area towards the front of the rat’s brain that controls this active forgetting mechanism. When a region at the front of the rat’s brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex was temporarily ‘switched off’ using the drug muscimol, the animal entirely lost its ability to selectively forget competing memories; despite undergoing the same “retrieval practice” task as before, rats now recognised B. In humans, the ability to selectively forget in this manner involves engaging an analogous region in the prefrontal cortex.  

“Rats appear to have the same active forgetting ability as humans do – they forget memories selectively when those memories cause distraction,” says Professor Anderson. “And, crucially, they use a similar prefrontal control mechanism as we do. This discovery suggests that this ability to actively forget less useful memories may have evolved far back on the ‘Tree of Life’, perhaps as far back as our common ancestor with rodents some 100 million years ago.”

Professor Anderson says that now that we know that the brain mechanisms for this process are similar in rats and humans, it should be possible to study this adaptive forgetting phenomenon at a cellular – or even molecular – level. A better understanding of the biological foundations of these mechanisms may help researchers develop improved treatments to help people forget traumatic events.

[isthsnametakenyet]

Favourite book?

What do I have here? An excuse to rant and rave (and fangirl a little) about books I love, for an unprecedented amount of time? Sign me up lads. 

First thing’s first – I am physically incapable of choosing one favourite book. Rather, I will list several favourites, along with the pile of books on my TBR, categorising by genre (because I am a nerd). Lets do this!

Young Adult Contemporary Fiction 

- Looking For Alibrandi, by Melina Marchetta: (A YA Contemporary written by the Aussie queen herself, Melina Marchetta. Following Italian-Australian Josie’s coming of age story as she grapples with family, identity, and home, this novel will forever be a favourite.)

- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz: (This is Ari and Dante’s beautiful, lyrically written story of love, family and identity. It is one that I have found myself rereading time and time again.)

- I’ll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson: (We follow the perspectives of twins Noah and Jude over two different timelines. It is not only about their journeys of self-discovery, but also about the family tragedy that tore them apart.)

Young Adult/New Adult/Adult Fantasy

- The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, by Mackenzi Lee: (A YA Fantasy Historical Fiction full of romance, magic, adventure, pirates, witty banter, near death situations and 18th Century fabulousness!)

- Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom (duology), by Leigh Bardugo: (All I can say is that in my eyes, this duology is the epitome of top-notch YA Fantasy. If I continue to write about these books I will go on for pages … So, enough said – read it!)

- The Raven Cycle series, by Maggie Stiefvater: (I devoured this four-book series in three days, and here’s why: magic, psychic powers, ancient Welsh kings, curses, ghosts, demons, nearly-dying, actually dying, Wealthy Private School Boys, Not-So-Wealthy Private School Boys, A Badass Not-Psychic Girl Who Dislikes Private School Boys But Who Ends Up Becoming Besties With Said Private School Boys.)

- The Diviners, by Libba Bray: (A ghost murder mystery following a cast of psychic characters set in 1920s New York City … it is a big yes from me.)

Adult Fiction 

- Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee: (A historical family saga through four generations of a Korean family who seek a better home, watch the home they left become divided and unrecognisable, live through the struggle of war and the political turmoil of Japanese colonisation. This novel is both a fictional and true story. It was fascinating and heart wrenching and powerful – definitely one that stands out as a favourite.)

- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer: (Exploring both the hardships of war and the power of literature, this novel follows an English author as she finds herself post WW2 on the Guernsey Channel Islands amidst the one-of-a-kind Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – aka the coolest book club in town.)

- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid: (An intricate, enthralling, eye-opening novel with constant cliff-hangers that led to me sacrificing many hours of sleep for answers.)

Children and Middle Grade Fiction

- The Magic Faraway Tree series, by Enid Blyton

- The Naughtiest Girl series, by Enid Blyton

- The Geronimo Stilton series!, by “Geronimo Stilton”

- The Spiderwick Chronicles, by Holly Black

- The Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan

- The Harry Potter series, by J K Rowling 

+ every Judy Blume book under the sun

Non-Fiction + Classics 

- Educated , by Tara Westover (Memoir)

- Dubliners, by James Joyce (Classic, collection of short stories)

- The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter (Classic, collection of short stories)

Books on my (ever-growing) TBR [My To Be Read list]

- Girls of Paper and Fire, by Natasha Ngan (Fantasy)

- The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E Harrow (Fantasy)

- Vicious, by V E Schwab (Fantasy)

- The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (Fantasy)

- Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo (Fantasy)

- Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (Fiction)

- The Place on Dalhousie, by Melina Marchetta (Fiction)

- Circe, by Madeline Miller (Historical Fantasy Fiction)

- Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie (Historical Magical Realism Fiction)

- Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks (Historical Fiction)

- All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (Historical Fiction)

- The Map of Salt and Stars, by Zeyn Joukhadar (Historical Fiction)

- The Lost Girls of Paris, by Pam Jenoff (Historical Fiction)

- Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, by Luc Sante (Historical Non-Fiction)

- Franklin and Eleanor, by Hazel Rowley (Historical Non-Fiction)

- Emergency S*x and Other Desperate Measures: True Stories from a War Zone, by Heidi Postlewait, Kenneth Cain, Andrew Thomson (Non-Fiction)

- Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, by George Packer (Non-Fiction)

- The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho (Classic)

I hope some of you find this helpful or interesting! Be sure to share your own favourite reads / any book recommendations as well! If you want to keep up to date with what I’m reading, follow me here:

Insta @ isthisnametakenyet

Goodreads @ isthisnametakenyet

(Thank you for the ask and the chance to go on about my fav books @jessicarevises !)

[spacedmar]

I want to go to museums and walk along the beach and drink coffee in local little cafés and wear cute outfits all the time and watch the sun set and visit novelty bookshops and go to hotels in foreign cities and take tons of pictures and explore