Black Coffee & College-Bound

I’m C, a 19-year-old attending Northwestern University (c/o 2021!) I’m a theatre and neuroscience double major. I’m on the premed track! Come for the studyblr aesthetic, stay for the relentless Pokémon fan :)

[estradiol-dyke]

masculine trans women are epic

[estradiol-dyke]

feminine trans men are braver than the troops

[estradiol-dyke]

reblog the full version cowards

[digoxin-purpurea]

apply for jobs you’re not qualified for! audit upper-level classes! get drunk with your TAs! see that poster advertising that lecture series? go there take notes and ask questions! thank the presenter for talking about this topic you love! if the class is full before you register, email the professor and ask if they can squeeze you in! RAISE YOUR HAND! tell the disability accomodation office to do their goddamn job! ask for help! file complaints! go to class in your pajamas and destroy the reading! you got this! you KNOW you got this! be arrogant enough to learn EVERYTHING! take your meds! punch a velociraptor in the dick! fear is useless and temporary! glory is forever! shed your skin and erupt angel wings! help out! spread your sun!

i had a really good morning! you deserve a really good morning! kill anyone who says you don’t and build a throne from their bones!

[studyingatsunrise]

HELL YEA

[macrolit]

Giveaway Contest: We’re giving away fifteen paperback classics featuring Richard Adams, Edgar Allan Poe, Simone de Beauvoir, J.R.R. Tolkien, Richard Wright, Harper Lee, and others! Won’t this collection look lovely on your shelf? :D To win these classics, you must: 1) be following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblog this post. We will choose a random winner on May 9, at which time we’ll start a new giveaway. And yes, we’ll ship to any country. Easy, right? Good luck!

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

listen I ended up regretting saying anything about this on my old blog because people will interpret literally any and every statement maliciously on this hellsite but I want to start like. a helpline for people who are like “hey I pretty much only read YA but I’m like 22 now and don’t relate to teenagers as much, it’s such a shame that there are no fun books written for adults :(” because boy HOWDY are there some fun books for adults 

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

maybe I’ll start a big google doc or something one day but for now *deep breath*

The Beautiful Ones (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - absolutely BUCKWILD romance with a dash of telekinesis; nonstop high society drama and misunderstanding from start to finish, happy ending guaranteed. STRONGLY recommend if you, like me, are a basic bitch who enjoys a bit of Pride and Prejudice. 

Binti (Nnedi Okorafor) - a math prodigy runs away from Earth to become the first of her people to attend a prestigious university in space, but shit gets real when a crew of hostile jellyfish aliens attack her ship. 

Chilling Effect (Valerie Valdes) - a spaceship captain and her crew take on a series of convoluted missions in order to rescue the captain’s sister, who’s been frozen and held for ransom. 

The City of Brass (S.A. Chakraborty) - an 18th century conwoman and a mysterious djinn team up to go looking for a legendary hidden city.

The City We Became (N.K. Jemisin) - a scrappy bunch of Chosen Ones have to band together to defend New York City (which is very much alive) from a huge ass monster. 

The Empress of Forever (Max Gladstone) - a lady supervillain gets blasted into space and meets an even bigger, planet-destroying evil space empress. literally WHAT is not to like?

The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo) - high fantasy royal drama about a woman making her way to power in the wake of a political marriage that left without friends or allies. 

Escaping Exodus (Nicky Drayden) - a space-faring clan are creating their latest spaceship from the insides of a giant monster when absolutely everything goes to shit (as things are wont to do in science fiction stories). 

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars (Kai Cheng Thom) - a trans girl runs away to the big city, where she uses her martial arts skills to team up with other trans woman and form a vigilante gang to defend their own when police look the other way. a fascinating blend of poetry and prose and magical realism. 

Finna (Nino Cipri) - two exes working at an IKEA have to team up to save a customer who disappeared through one of those interdimensional portals that all IKEAs have laying around. you know how it is.

Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) - come on, you’ve heard about this one. it’s the one with the lesbian space necromancers? yeah, that’s the one. you got it.

In the Vanishers’ Palace (Aliette de Bodard) - a Beauty and the Beast retelling based in science fiction and Vietnamese fantasy, featuring a young woman falling in love with a “beast” who’s actually a motherly dragon after becoming a tutor to the dragon’s two powerful children. 

Jade City (Fonda Lee) - urban fantasy gang wars, pitting one magically enhanced family against rivals and a new drug that lets anyone mimic their abilities. 

The Library of the Unwritten (A.J. Hackwith) - hell’s librarian gets sent on a quest to find a runaway soul. 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Becky Chambers) - aka one of my favorite books ever, essentially slice of life science fiction following an interspecies crew of deep space truckers making the longest and most complicated delivery of their lives. very warm and fuzzy. 

Mort (Terry Pratchett) - one of many MANY Discworld books, but a very good one to start with, following the adventures of a boy named Mort after he’s taken on as Death’s apprentice. you know, like the Grim Reaper? that Death. 

River of Teeth (Sarah Gailey) - historical AU in which the United States imported and domesticated hippos in the Mississippi River; follows a crew of hippo-riding crooks and hooligans as they plan one heck of a caper. 

Space Opera (Catherynne Valente) - a washed up rock star and his old bandmate get roped into performing in an intergalactic singing competition that will determine the fate of the entire planet Earth. full of aliens, attempted assassination, art, and emotional turmoil. 

This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone) - time-travelling assassins from rival factions fall in love in a poetic and breathless story that spans centuries and reality. 

Under the Pendulum Sun (Jeannette Ng) - fairyland is real, and Victorian England is sending missionaries. a woman and her brother attempt to bring the good word to the fair folk, but start to suspect the queen might just be screwing with their heads. PEAK gothic horror with a creepy fairy twist. 

Witchmark (C.L. Polk) - a doctor and former soldier with magical powers of healing is trying to live a quiet life and avoid his controlling, aristocratic family’s plans for him, only to get tangled up in a massive political conspiracy when one of his patients mysterious dies. accompanying him in his investigation is a mysterious and gorgeous faerie man. romance ensues. 

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

for those of y’all who like goodreads I’ve started a shelf of adult books for ya fans, which is currently 40+ books strong and will continue to grow

[medusasstory]

It’s absolutely possible to have fun in adult fiction (I say as someone who has been burned before), you just gotta touchstones. If you just go for the bestsellers, you’re gonna end up reading the same five grimdark military fantasies written by straight white men. But if you find even one book you like, you can go out there and say “find me something that has the sarcasm and lack of romance but big heart of murderbot” or “y’all got anything with the sexual-religious worldbuilding of the Kushiel books” or whatever floats your boat, and then you build a circle of authors and books you enjoy. A list like the one above is a great starting point.

[welcomedtonewyork-deactivated20]

I’ve been trying this out and it’s been quite helpful 🤗

[robinade]

She has tons of great comics like this, you should all check out her Instagram.

[womenintheirwebs-archived]

“In everyone’s mind there is a whisper of the next step. It may be simple, such as making a phone call or reading a book. It may be a very concrete, mundane step to take that may not even seem connected with your higher vision. Know that you are always being shown the next step; it is always something that comes to your mind as obvious, simple, and a joyful thing to do.”

— Sanaya Roman, Living with Joy (via icreatewhatibelieve)

[claudiarying]

042420

As most people are working and studying from home right now, I wanted to share some concrete, implementable ways you can help yourself feel better. Though I believe productivity and quantity of work done (or lack thereof) doesn’t/shouldn’t translate into your self-worth and how you view yourself, when you get work done, you actually do feel better in your own body. 

By the way, it’s the first time I’m formatting a tips/guide post like this, so I apologize that I couldn’t be more concise.

I’ve spoken to a licensed professional counsellor as well as to some professionals who have been working from home for a long time, and some of the advice above is from them. I’m also sharing from my own experience as someone who used to be very productive and an (ex-)overachiever, and still attach a lot of my self-worth to grades and other tangible accomplishments. I hope these slides can help you. In case it’s hard to read, I’ve included it (reworded) in text form if you’d like to read more. 

Keep reading

[eregyrn-falls]

I thought there might be a lot of other people who would benefit from reading this, too.

(Original tweet.)

[pigmenting]

sometimes i forget how many times i’ve picked myself off the floor, how many times i’ve washed away smudgy makeup and put myself to bed. how many times i’ve said no to something unhealthy. said yes to something good. how many times i’ve treated myself with kindness and patience. i forget how many times i’ve tended to wounds and made peace with my own anger. if i was taking care of a body that was not my own, i’d believe i was doing everything i could. so here’s to remembering that i’m doing the best i can.

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

you are allowed to feel upset about missing out on things even though there are worse things in the world right now. losing the chance to enjoy major life events in the time of a crisis doesn’t mean you’re ignoring the crisis. it just means your a human being who was looking forward to something. it’s okay to be sad.

[postitforward]

It just means you’re human. 

[gorgonsach]

x

[justgfy]

Unions are trash. Theyll Destroy a whole company for firing a shitty worker.

[gorgonsach]

unions are the reason you aren’t paid 2.50 an hour with steel beams about to bust ya head open shut up lol

[explorerrowan]

Unions are why you have 5 day, 40 hour full-time work weeks. Unions are why they have to pay you in actual dollars instead of “company credits” that you can only spend at the company-owned stores. Unions are why there are fucking fire exits at your place of work. Unions are why it’s not okay for your supermarket ground beef to be any percentage human.

You think your company pays you out of the goodness of their hearts? Or even out of “market pressure?” The “job market” is a myth perpetuated by the capitalists. Corporations would pay you nothing if they could get away with it. And you argue “oh, but if they paid me nothing I’d just go to another one.” Wrong. Because to maximize profits, they all want to pay you nothing. Corporations exist to maximize profits while reducing risk for investors. It’s part of their entire function to find ways to cut costs as much as possible, and that includes finding ways to pay you nothing.

Unions are your defense against that. You think all a union does is strike? If you pay union dues, a lot of that is spent on lobbyists in various governments reminding your lawmakers that you have rights as a living human being that a corporation should not be able to stomp all over. Unions hire lawyers so that if you’re fired for bullshit reasons, the union can stand up for you against your boss. They’re called unions because workers are uniting to pool resources so that they can stand up to these corporate overlords with more money than God. Unions exist because you might not have the words, resources, or time to fight workplace injustices all by yourself. That’s the whole fucking point.

And if a business shuts down because a union is striking, it’s because the business was abusing people and didn’t deserve to be in business anyway. Don’t make excuses for the corporations. They already have trillions of dollars and a couple million lawyers to do that for themselves. They don’t need your help.

[evilvillain123456789]

hey. hey. hey! hey!!?!???!!! *knocks over your lamp* *smokes all of your weed* *dehydrates all of your food*

[bon-appetit-babey]

[pasteliapeaches]

walking through the flower field 💐

[ex-injuria-jus-non-oritur]

Quarantine Study Tips

If you're like me and you've still got deadlines despite the global pandemic, this list is for you! These are a few of the tips that have helped keep me on track while having no structure whatsoever.

1. Maintain a routine

While it's easy to fall into the habit of sleeping in and getting to your work when you get to it, it helps SO much if you get up at the same time every day, make yourself breakfast, get on some comfortable clothes and get on it. The earlier you get started on your work the easier it is to stick with it!

2. Get out of your pajamas

I'm saying don't stay in the clothes you slept in. I've been living in leggings but I get out of bed and change into leggings (and a cozy sweater/cardigan). Definitely work in what you're comfortable in, but not what you slept in.

3. Have something that makes you look forward to the work.

A tasty breakfast, your favourite tea, a good playlist, making aesthetically pleasing notes whatever you like. It makes you start the day on a good note!

4. Have a study space

Again, doesn't have to be fancy but somewhere that you associate with school work and being productive.

5. Maintain some sort of activity.

Now that we're all self isolating we are losing even the bare minimum of the activity we used to get, walking around campus for example. I spend at least 30 mins a day doing yoga, it's low impact, makes me feel great and there's a million YouTube yoga classes!

6. Take breaks.

While is feels unproductive, most of us having nothing but time to do this work. Take a break! Video chat your friends. Play games with your family. Take your dog for a walk. Have a nap. Make a snack. Breaks are healthy!!

7. Take care of yourself

In what ever way you can. This is a scary situation for everyone and you're allowed to feel however you want about it. If you're struggling, reach out! Most universities have procedures in place including wellness teams and relaxed extension policies. Stay connected with family and friends. The houseparty app is amazing! And please, please wash your hands and don't go out unless absolutely necessary 💕

My inbox is always open! Feel free to drop me a message about anything.

Happy studying everyone 💕

[subtubitles]

[golemmanifesto]

Notice how Shan Yu doesn’t even question it or make a comment about “BUT YOU’RE A GIRL” he just instantly goes into a “I’LL TEACH YOU TO KILL MY MEN AND STEAL MY VICTORY” rage and I think about this a lot sometimes

[ruffnutthorstonthebesttwin-deac]

((Well that might have to do with the fact that he’s a Hun.  Women among the Huns had higher status than their Chinese counterparts and even some of their own men. Women were free to hunt and fight along side of the men, could choose their own husbands and divorce him if she choose to. There were even records of clans being led by women leaders. So for Shan Yu Mulan is just another soldier))

[hotdiggitydammit-deactivated202]

thank you, history side of tumblr.

[nealdk-blog]

He also might not have been able to see very well, due to whatever horrible disease has taken hold in his eyeballs.

[temporalscallywag]

Pretty serious Wilson’s Disease judging by the copper buildup in in irises, and apparent melanocytosis localized to his sclera.

[moonfallplays-deactivated202501]

Thank you medical side of tumblr

[aquilacalvitium]

I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS FOREVER

[muraae]

It’s always mandatory to reblog this whenever it appears

[thesassycat]

You can only reblog this today.

[askjennaflorida]

I missed my chance last year. Not gonna let it happen again

[dragongrowlings]

The panic over COVID-19 causing people to hoard shit unnecessarily means I can't find medical supplies (like disinfecting alcohol wipes) without paying an obnoxiously exorbitant amount.

Generally healthy, able-bodied people don't need masks, exam gloves, or alcohol swabs to protect themselves against COVID-19. But chronically ill people and their caretakers do need those supplies to live their everyday lives.

Calm the fuck down and wash your fucking hands, ableds.

[dragongrowlings]

Able-bodied people and not-chronically-ill people are encouraged to reblog this, whether or not you're panicking over coronavirus.

[deactivatyng-deactivated2020082]

This is a legitimate concern. I work in the Veterinary Medicine field and we are short on many of the items we need to function and save patients lives on a daily basis - exam gloves, surgical masks, etc.