Let’s read between the lines

I will try to write here)

[jullane]

One’s existence begins to feel differently when academic pressure bears down upon one like the water column in the Mariana Trench. “Oh, but it is only an exam”, they say. I wish it were. Yet it’s curios how a thin brochure may eventually provoke the collapse of one’s identity. Failure begins to signify unworthiness of education itself. Of course, It is not objective, yet it feels so. And there seems to be no refuge from that detested feeling.

Under such extremity, one gradually looses one’s human qualities, becoming stripped of individuality and reduced to anonymity. One is valued much like a financial asset. And thus, one slowly forgets the pleasure of learning new, because all of it collapses into a mere count of the vortices within one’s brain.

Study ought to inspire person, not suck one dry and white. Yet that appears to be the system, incidentally, quite comprehensible for majority. Thus, there remains little choice but to become responsive to its demands. But what if one is too weak? Then it may become a desperate ending for one’s passion and perhaps for one’s sense of self-determination.

[mjuuuk]

oh noo, i only just saw this! i'm sending you a big hug and honestly just hope you're still able to rest a bit for the moment and take some small downtime for yourself despite the pressure (which i know i always say, but it's truly most important of all)!! I know exam season can be draining as hell (been there many times), but please please know it should never feel so bad it strips you of your worth as a student, or even worse, a human. A thing I can very much recommend if you're feeling helpless is reaching out to your faculty's student representation or office though. The people working there are very sweet and eager in trying to help you with whatever you're struggling, and in my experience with studies there's very few situations with a dead end. That being said, an exam also really says nothing about your strength or being 'worth' of studying (or even understanding the subject), but much more about the structural environment it takes place in. you have such a bright mind, i'm sure everything will work out in some way or another (it always does!)

and also of course always feel free to reach out if you need help, or some distraction yapping about other things (⸝⸝ᵕᴗᵕ⸝⸝)

[jullane]

Thanks so much for you support, I hope I did not sound to dramatic, but I have rather a dangerous situation. Almost a plight, to be completely frank 🙂

But I appreciate every single word of yours — more than I can properly express. And I miss our yapping. Miss it a lot.

Yet I am not quite sure if I can afford myself any well-becoming leasure, since I have performed quite poorly on my previous exam. But you must be right, after all it is not a matter of life and death. So, maybe I indeed should take a deeper breath..

[jullane]

One’s existence begins to feel differently when academic pressure bears down upon one like the water column in the Mariana Trench. “Oh, but it is only an exam”, they say. I wish it were. Yet it’s curios how a thin brochure may eventually provoke the collapse of one’s identity. Failure begins to signify unworthiness of education itself. Of course, It is not objective, yet it feels so. And there seems to be no refuge from that detested feeling.

Under such extremity, one gradually looses one’s human qualities, becoming stripped of individuality and reduced to anonymity. One is valued much like a financial asset. And thus, one slowly forgets the pleasure of learning new, because all of it collapses into a mere count of the vortices within one’s brain.

Study ought to inspire person, not suck one dry and white. Yet that appears to be the system, incidentally, quite comprehensible for majority. Thus, there remains little choice but to become responsive to its demands. But what if one is too weak? Then it may become a desperate ending for one’s passion and perhaps for one’s sense of self-determination.

[dream-as-life]

Oh bestie, I'm sending you tons of hugs and good vibes in this dreading times 🫂💕

I honestly feel you and empathize a lot with this because it used to happen to me a lot before I dropped out of college the first time. Honestly, it's exhausting how the system isn't designed for anyone to actually enjoy what one chooses to study, but rather to make you suffer by memorizing and suffocating you under tons of exams, research, etc (and let's not even get with teachers that are full of shit and make your life and learning impossible).

I can't exactly say that I'm fully enjoying my time returning to college after I changed courses (mostly for a few personal affairs and the current state of my own country and the world), but I can tell you I'm much more calmer than when I first started. And to be honest, I hate studying in the sense of taking exams and such, but I love learning and I'm finding myself loving things I uaed to hate or say that weren't important. It takes a lot of time to undo a few ideas we get imposed on us since we are children, and our personal expectations too (that sometimes doesn't come from us, but from external factors); but the reward is way more greater once you slowly start changing (and challenging) your own internal ecosystem. Inherently, it will change tje external too.

Grades don't define your worth, neither as a person, nor as a student. BUT, and this is important for you to accept, sometimes grades can grant you a slight advantage depending on the programs or goals you're aiming to achieve — whether you are trying to get into some specific field, research thing/place, even when you're trying to get a job (but also won't really secure you a spot, but that depends on many external factors that you can't control entirely).

What you can control (which is easier said than be done, but bare with me on this) is HOW you approach your own study course. Again, it isn't easy, and most of the times you will find yourself questioning whether you're really on the right path, or if you're up to it... And let me tell you, it's fine and a bit normal to think of it.

As I said before, we are drilled from a young age that you have to study something, get a degree and achieve a job all in the span of your youth ans before your 30's, otherwise you're a failure. Well, no, that's bullshit. The educational system (which varies in every different country ofc, but i find all of them repeating a same pattern) aren't designed entirely for students to enjoy the process, they don't allow any mistakes (and if they do, the price to pay is bigger and costed with a piece of yourself), and to also try as many different courses until students find the one that really works for oneself. Everything is dull, "automatized" in the way you aren't given many freedom to study that isn't memorize, repeat, rinse and repeat again. It's not your fault, the system is obsolete to nowadays standards, and it also refuses to change.

And also, you aren't weak at all. You're a person, a human being that struggles, that has it's own personal problems; but also that feels, that is emotional and sensitive. The system doesn't care about that because they are more focused on producing, rather than evolving. But you do, and that's what gets you out of a designed system that discards emotions, and focuses on automatizing. Like, we spend most of your 20's and 30's wasted in getting a degree, securing a job, a house, a family and just have all our life resolved before we learnt to breathe and live — and that sucks, because then we don't know what live means, or how to do it.

All in all, I'm not saying exams aren't stressful. They are, a Hella lot and some days are worse than others. But it doesn't mean you're failing, or you're behind of the rest. No. You're are learning to live, and juggling with a lot of things with only two hands.

If you can afford those, take one or two days off. Go out, sleep a lot and do things that will get your mind distracted for a moment, and your soul refreshed too. Studying is exhausting, but it shouldn't mean losing your sanity for the sake of getting a good mark. You aren't a grade, and you aren't less if you happen to fail — it should never equate to your worht, your validation or your existence.

[jullane]

Your reblog awakened my disquieted mind from a desperate dream. But, to be completely frank, my situation is rather extreme. Nevertheless, your words made me feel a little better.

I am sorry that you faced the same situation, though I suspect it is rather inevitable within the contemporary educational system. I used to think that a university was somewhat a warm refuge for a leaven of strong ideas and interests. That proved to be a great misconception of mine. Yet I am hardly in a position to despise the system, for before doing so I ought to be able to suggest a better one.

But I would agree with your point that, back then, education was more comfortably paced and accessible, though, of course, such a statement cannot be entirely universal.

Grades do not define one’s worth. I know that. Yet for the sake of grades one may be asked to sacrifice the time devoted to one’s interests, comradeship, health and self-development. And if study has taken away all the qualities by which one used to value oneself, then upon what should one rely when judging one’s worth? If study is the last thing that remained, and one performed poorly, then it would be rather natural (thought not necessarily fair) to devalue oneself.

The qualms about the chosen subject may follow a person for many years. There’s a quote from “Stairway to Heaven” which genuinely resonates with me: “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in a long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on”. It has been inspiring me ever since I heard the song for the first time. Yet, as a disciple of empiricism, I may never be fully able to rely on such a beautiful line.

What strikes me as particularly ironic is that knowledge itself actually takes time. The process of learning is naturally slow. Ideas need to be revisited, questioned, abandoned, rediscovered, before they can be genuinely understood.

At one time, higher education institutions did not set any rigid timelines for students. The academic environment used to be unobstructed, allowing young people to spend months on reading and discussing ideas. The space and time were provided.

Yet now we attempt to compress vast fields of knowledge into a few hurried years. And we expect students not only to learn, but to compete, publish, and work. The result is that many of us spend years pursuing education while having very little opportunity to actually think.

It seems to me that in the modern world deceleration has become an unaffordable luxury. As the Red Queen once told Alice: “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” I doubt I could formulate the problem any better.

Everything seems to move with alarming velocity.

On the one hand, there is the endless traffic, the incessant cascade of electronic notifications, the burning deadlines, cafes that subtly ensure one does not stay longer than intended, and traffic lights that change green to red so quickly that one finds oneself running.

On the other hand, housing grows more expensive, healthcare follows the same path, and even the simple prospect of living a modest and peaceful life appears increasingly distant.

And everywhere one hears: “Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!”

But what if I don’t want to?

What if I want to slow down? To take my time whenever I eat, drink, walk, read, or think. The modern world often appears suspicious of such desires. It treats slowness as idleness, contemplation as counterproductivity, and patience as a lack of ambition. And perhaps that is why so many people feel exhausted nowadays.

Sorry for that horribly long response, I hope it’s quite readable. I just have too much to say about this theme. And thanks again for carrying 💕🫂

[isabelopaque]

When someone likes the thing you made for them

[jullane]

One’s existence begins to feel differently when academic pressure bears down upon one like the water column in the Mariana Trench. “Oh, but it is only an exam”, they say. I wish it were. Yet it’s curios how a thin brochure may eventually provoke the collapse of one’s identity. Failure begins to signify unworthiness of education itself. Of course, It is not objective, yet it feels so. And there seems to be no refuge from that detested feeling.

Under such extremity, one gradually looses one’s human qualities, becoming stripped of individuality and reduced to anonymity. One is valued much like a financial asset. And thus, one slowly forgets the pleasure of learning new, because all of it collapses into a mere count of the vortices within one’s brain.

Study ought to inspire person, not suck one dry and white. Yet that appears to be the system, incidentally, quite comprehensible for majority. Thus, there remains little choice but to become responsive to its demands. But what if one is too weak? Then it may become a desperate ending for one’s passion and perhaps for one’s sense of self-determination.

[no-point-inliving]

August Diehl as Stefan Polt — Der Pass / Pagan Peak s.3

(p.3)

[mjuuuk]

she's so babygirl actually it's incomprehensible

[jullane]

My sweet girl😭😭😭 Adding these, because she is the most beautiful creature in the world and I love her forever:

[uroko]

松の木にねこさんが登っていました。

[batsandboba]

“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know

[petemcvries23]

the natural lifespan of a fandom is unlimited. when well tended a fandom can be functionally immortal. and yet everywhere you look you see newly bred fandoms withering and dying when they’re barely a year old. barely even six months old. fans are looking at their six month old fandoms and saying i think it’s on its last legs, should i euthanise it? when with the proper care that fandom could outlive them for decades. it’s sad. sad state of affairs we’re in.

[mjuuuk]

doors i like very much !

[jullane]

The doors… oh, those metaphorically inexhaustible leaves. Vienna is filled with wonderfully urbane ones, some of which, quite against one’s will, might have awakened certain warm, involuntary memories…

[jullane]

I know that it’s quite far from Halloween, but once I came across that photo reference, I simply couldn’t resist the temptation to draw Gedellie in costumes!

My little cops never leave my mind, even in times of plight.

[mjuuuk]

seeing this on the dash and suddenly my skin is clear, anxiety and depression are cured, i have 10/10 vision, the SUN IS SHINING,

you will not believe me when i say this but i swear we have the exact same minds. i have this EXACT pic saved in my reference folder for them since AGES but never got around to do anything with it (pssspss mostly i was lazy) so thank you thank you thank you for making it real<3<3<3

[jullane]

That’s who we are, fans of Der Pass:

To be honest, I have seen that picture several times before, but only recently realised how terribly well it would fit them. And your note about Ellie being a sun for that huge puffy moth is so pertinent, I love it so much!

[jullane]

I know that it’s quite far from Halloween, but once I came across that photo reference, I simply couldn’t resist the temptation to draw Gedellie in costumes!

My little cops never leave my mind, even in times of plight.

[mjuuuk]

since it’s friday i need to share this absolute banger of a bag design i spotted on my walk yesterday

(text is saying ‚weekend soon!‘)

[jullane]

The bow of rain after the end of its symphony.

[jullane]

Gedeon and Ellie as kids :)

@mjuuuk has inspired me to imagine what would happen if these two met each other during their childhood, so I decided to illustrate my vision of such a scenario.

The show itself has never revealed the exact age of its characters, yet, based on their appearance, I would assume they have quite remarkable age difference (approximately 7-10 years). In such case my drawing might seem quite irrelevant.

So, let’s then leave out the details…?

[jullane]

I took a train in the wrong direction and only realised it six stops later (I had my headphones on, talking to my mother). That was the view that greeted me once I left the carriage:

But then I turned around, only for my weary eyes to meet this:

Oh, dear Danube, what are you doing to my soul?

[jullane]

Hehe, that was actually mischievous U1 ;)

[jullane]

I took a train in the wrong direction and only realised it six stops later (I had my headphones on, talking to my mother). That was the view that greeted me once I left the carriage:

But then I turned around, only for my weary eyes to meet this:

Oh, dear Danube, what are you doing to my soul?

[dream-as-life]

Well, as tragic as it was for you to be heading in the wrong direction, I believe that something was trying to show you the beauty of a landscape.

I get it's a pain to return back, but at least you have a breathtaking picture with you to lift up your spirit 🫂💕

[jullane]

Thanks for caring about my well-being, I am already home, safe and sound, in bed with a cup of tea :)

I hope you don’t forget to take care of yourself today too, we all have deserved a hot drink and some lawful (not a sugar lump beaded with some suspicious liquid, herr Winter) treat 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️