ad meliora

chaotic scholar (my major is a mystery even to me) / XXI / dark academia / infp / adhd / ig: chaoticacademia

[kilbygirrl]

these 20’s really aint roaring man

[huggingthehorse-blog]

[aevie]

creating myself

[germanellewoods]

14.06.2021 ~ You seem to like my notes, so here are some more ✨

What do you do when you're not studying? Do you have any special hobbies?

[edvardnicholas]

that tiktok sound where you separate the harmonies for mikas grace kelly has been stuck in my head all day but i still managed to get some work done💫

[law-law-land]

8.19.2021 ~ Something about a rainy day spent in the library...

[headspace-hotel]

This Is How You Actually Take Notes In College, Bitches

it’s occurred to me that nobody fuckin knows how to take notes in classes and most advice about it is bad. What the fuck are “key words?”

So anyway here’s how I’ve gotten a’s in all my classes in college so far

I’m not gonna bother too much with telling you to take notes in class. Everyone knows that shit. But most people’s note taking skills suck ass and there are two main types of sucking ass I have observed

The first is the one where your notes look like a list of key terms and words. Sometimes they are underlined or there are dashes that connect them to other words. So if your prof was talking about Henry VIII you’d write down something like

Henry VIII

Church of England—divorce

DON’T DO THAT. Those words are gonna show up on the test, sure, but writing them down isn’t gonna help you with the test. What the fuck does any of that mean? High school is shit and your “key words” can’t help you now.

Here’s the other type of bad note taking:

It was necessary for Henry VIII to have a male heir who could succeed him, but his wife was unable to conceive a son. The Catholic Church

I stopped writing there because your professor moved on to something else. But, tbh, even if you can write fast enough to keep up with the content of the lectures (and you can’t for the entire lecture) it’s not helpful to have a solid wall of Everything That Was Covered In The Lecture, in grammatically correct complete sentences. Are you gonna read that shit again? No!

And honestly most people have like, sentences here and there that look important instead of the whole lecture. Which is also bad.

So what’s the not shitty way to take notes? It comes down to these principles:

Shorthand

Show Relationships of Things

These kind of go together

I cannot emphasize enough that you don’t need to write sentences like a normal person. Shorthand everything, and I don’t mean some fucked up studying shorthand you just came up with like “AmR” for American Revolution, I mean like...fuckin text/memespeak. Don’t write complete sentences, completely abandon formality. Abbreviate anything you would in a text message, you know what it means.

HOWEVER: You Must Show How Things Are Related To Things

To understand broad concepts you gotta understand how the things in them are related to other things.

That’s why writing down “Henry VIII” and “Church of England” isn’t gonna help you, because you’re not learning that there is a Church of England.

Did Henry VIII burn the Church of England? Cheat on his wife with it? Who knows? Definitely not you.

This is why you have to connect stuff like

Catholic Church says no divorce

Henry VIII—starts Church of England

But ya know you can make that more memorable AND more clearly show how one thing caused the other

Henry VIII: divorce >:)

Catholic Church: no

Henry VIII: fuk u *church of england*

I’m completely dead serious about this, this kind of slang is very good at indicating exactly how things relate to things in zero time and you know exactly what it means and you’ll remember it

But furthermore

You have to come up with shorthand to quickly indicate how things are related. Say you write down the definitions of two terms for like, opposing theories on government in class. That’s great but you’re leaving it to yourself to work out the opposing part later from what you write, and your brain’s a flaky bitch.

Like part of what you’re doing it giving yourself help with HOW to study your notes later.

So like. Do something like write a jagged line in between the definitions, indicating conflict. Write “OTOH” or “HOWEVER” in between in big fuckin letters. Writing down “Catholic Church” and what that is and “Church of England” and what that is, is fine. But like, if the main theme is the contrast between the two, “Catholic Church HOWEVER Church of England” immediately tells you the basicest basics. It’s like a tiny outline, telling you what to expect. Sure, you can figure it out reading your notes but I’m telling you how to write skimmable notes that you can glean stuff from even when you’re half spaced out and shit, okay?

Same thing for like, dates and sequences and cause-and-effect and stuff. Even if you’ve got the dates down...be sure to put arrows or something so even at a glance you’ve got basically what’s going on.

Also i know it feels like wasting paper but DONT scrunch all your notes together into small space on the paper. That lil dialogue between Henry and the Church of England is spread out over 3 lines which means if you have ADHD like me you can actually fuckin read it. Turn things into bullet lists. Indent things with little arrows to show things leading to things. If there’s a clear move to a new topic, new page. If you’re actually filling up the paper all the way that shits hard to read and it’s even harder to pick out the Big Important Stuff.

Last word of advice: If you end up like writing down two things and can’t tell what they’re for or how they’re related to each other...ASK QUESTIONS. Like “I’m sorry can you explain how the Church of England is related to the Catholic Church? I didn’t quite catch that.” If talking in class makes you feel like you might be percieved badly, you can frame it like a Nerd Question “So, what kind of relationship would you say the Church of England and the Catholic Church had?” or just play it off like you didn’t hear it like “I’m sorry, what was that last thing you said about the Church of England and the Catholic Church?”

Or just make a mark on your notes to remind yourself that you need more info and to go to your prof’s office to ask questions. I would really not be nervous about that, professors normally really like it when students show that they really want to succeed in the class and that they care. Unless they’re like, a complete dickhead, in which case, fuck what they think, right? You’re gonna ask questions and it’s their problem because you’re essentially paying them for your presence in the class.

So...yeah.

[aeoliantectrix]

You're a goddamn life saver i fuckin love you here is my first born child and my hand in marriage i have made it all the way to fuckin college and nobody ever gave me useful advice on note taking

[heavenlyyshecomes]

the relationship between girls and the fantasy series they read when young is so special nothing comes close to it

[cl3rks]

Burn Notice. [S1.E1: Pilot.]

[platypusisnotonfire]

This is legitimately how I’ve broken into a thousand places like just act like you’re meant to be there and if someone actually ends up calling you out on it just be super confused

[platypusisnotonfire]

#I would be an excellent pentester and actually have considered it as a job many a time#when I was a kid (7-14ish) my grandmother was in the hospital a lot and I was a bored kid that no one was really watching#and we spent days and days at the hospital over the course of those years#so I’d wander around and it became a challenge to see where it could get into without gettting caught#and the answer is basically everywhere#like ther is no legit reason for an 11 year old to be in the morgue but I was tall for my age and I would carry a cup of coffee#and look irritated to be there like someone woke me up for this#and no one would question me#people would ask where are you headed and if you just exhaustedly point through a security door 97% of the time they will swipe their card#-and open it for you

I want to add that I don’t make a habit of this now that I am a law abiding adult, but recently I accidentally did this again. Having been used to having my run of hospitals and walking basically anywhere as a child, I was visiting a friend in the hospital just before covid and I was legitimately exhausted and carrying a coffee cup cuz it was like 5:30am or something dumb, and I went to leave and get to the bottom floor and i’m like “this is not the lobby” and I walked around for a bit and people kept holding doors for me so I traveled through many corridors, and nothing looked familiar, and then I realized every single door was a key card swipe and everyone had mag-stripe badges with varying security levels and I realized I had gotton onto a staff elevator with the staff, who had swiped their card to go down into a high-security area of the building, and people had just been letting me through all these security doors.

So then I had to out myself and be like “Um I accidentally broke into you high-security wing, please show me the door, I’m literally just trying to leave this hospital” and I had to get like searched and stuff. 

And what was funny was that while I was blissfully walking around assuming I belonged, No one questioned ANYTHING and in fact, were violating protocols left and right to let me through, but the VERY SECOND I realized I was not where I was supposed to be and let that show on my face, like three people in the hall confronted me. 

So the take away is, be confident that you belong, look exhausted and like you don’t want to be there, and carry a cup of coffee. It will open pretty much all doors.

@clutchkuza I feel like you need to hear this lol

[i-am-corbin-dallas]

No joke, Burn Notice is a great show. If you like Leverage, give Burn Notice a try (its available on Hulu and Prime iirc) and frfr, confidence and an excuse are all you need to get around places

[disasterlarper]

This works I accidentally broke into someone’s whole ass home a month or so ago and uhhh it went fine because I’m short white and VERY CONFUSED

[echodrops]

One time while I was in Rome, I was busy admiring the ruins and not paying attention to signage, got lost, and ended up in some kind of archaeological dig or restoration. Not knowing it was off-limits (having missed all signage, as previously stated), I started peeking around all the stone stuff, wandering off the path, and most importantly (to this story), poking around in a hole that had been dug into the ground. I was careful not to touch anything, but still, clearly (to anyone who wasn’t as oblivious as me) this was not a place a tourist was meant to be.

I finally attracted the notice of someone who was meant to be part of this restoration project when I came back up from the hole. He quickly came over to ask me, in Italian, what I’m sure were the very normal questions of “Who are you?”, “What are you doing here??”, etc.

Problem: I do not speak Italian.

My brain’s solution: Quick, what language do we speak that’s close?! 

And that is how I wandered up out of a hole in a Roman ruin without warning and began speaking ancient Latin to an archaeologist.

This man’s face went through 15 different absolutely floored expressions in ten seconds, like you could physically see him going through the thought process of “Have I encountered a ghost from ancient Rome? No, ghosts aren’t real. But if ghosts not real, how Latin??? Fellow researcher??? Supposed to be here???”

So this is the story of how I was allowed to walk away without issue at all after blatantly trespassing upon the ruins of ancient Rome, because if you speak Latin, where else would you belong?

[randomslasher]

Every story in this thread is amazing

[lookataleaf3000]

Lundy bancroft legit has dedicated his life to working directly with abusive men to interrupt their thinking and behavioral patterns, and making said patterns knowable and nameable by women. That is what male feminist ally behavior actually looks like. Obviously the every day person isn’t going to spend their entire life doing the kind of work he does, but on a micro level, recognizing and speaking about male pattern aggression/manipulation and disrupting those patterns in yourself and those around you is something you can actually be striving for.

That means not using your newfound gender awareness as a way to make women caretake your guilt, or coming up with clever ways to “overcome” that guilt, or using feminist rhetoric as a social capital or manipulation tool. It’s not that we’re not all very glad that you’ve learned how to cry – it would just be nice if you weren’t just doing all the same old stuff “once more, but with feeling.”

[respectthefemalebody]

I love the way he never believes in their lies. I love the way he looks at things with complete honesty about the situation. I love how he is a man who is genuinely unwilling to trust abusers.

Here’s a free pdf of his book, Why Does He Do That?

[parliamentaryinquiry]

I cannot believe I didn’t realize until this moment that Lundy Bancroft is a man.

[dworkinlover69-deactivated20210]

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

He also really doesn’t beat around the bush. He comes right out at the beginning of the book and says he’s using “he” for the abuser and “she” for the victim, because that is the majority of cases. As with all “good” men, I’m cautiously optimistic, but Why Does He Do That? is a very resource to have. At the time of writing he’d counselled over 1000 abusive men IIRC.

[astronofeminist]

HELLO MY FELLOW LOVELY, SMART, HELPFUL WOMEN!!!!!

I know we love to reblog this, cuz this shit is real. It’s a real, real, real, amazing book, and THE RARITY! Of a man actually understanding and being raw…. but half the time the LINKS ARE DEAD!!!

Here is a new one. This also tells me people aren’t reading it… you don’t gotta! But atleast skim if you haven’t yet.

why-does-he-do-that.pdf

“This fascinating investigation into what makes abusive men tick is alarming, but its candid handling of a difficult subject makes it a valu

Chef kiss to you all 😚

[selena-soto]

[s8vvvy]

people who understand your need for isolation and the idea that it’s ok to not speak every single day. thank you

[flowerais-deactivated20211031]

it doesn’t matter. you will still have fun baking a distastrous looking bread loaf. you will still have fun painting a technically bad painting. you will get happy brain chemicals dancing like a weirdo. be bad on purpose.

[edvardnicholas]

ever since i was forced to read fröken julie (miss julie) by august strindberg i've hated the man with a deep passion

but somehow stig larsson (not stieg, the cool one who wrote the millennium trilogy) managed to make me hate him even more with his absolute shitstorm of a book (autisterna)

so as a present to my favourite feminist professor who's leaving this year i wrote the shadies, most bitter, least academic essay ever

favourite quote (by myself): "these two men make me wish men didn't exist"

[autiestella-archive]

there seem lot positive for ppl who struggle but manage school, but not much for ppl who fail, who drop out, or never able go in firstplace

so just wanting shoutout at fellow ppl who couldn’t manage, who never been able, & may never be able. we’re worth love, too, no matter what knowledge got in head - we’re more than just number.

[poeticsdialogue]

Starting my bullet journal again 🖋

[strangehats-deactivated20220504]