little, tiny, faves of a magpie

[magpiequotenest]

I had been saving to take the GREs since second year of university, starting my redbubble shop in 2014. For each sticker sold, I earned $0.23 CAD. This funded my GREs because I was already spending all of my waking hours in class, being a research assistant, or working to fund my undergraduate degree. The only wiggle room I had for funding anything extra was spending “idle” hours, like commuting, study breaks, lunch breaks, creating for Redbubble.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/i-had-to-sell-1000-stickers-to-afford-the-gres-and-it-took-me-2-years-1182e463811d

[magpiequotenest]

For a period I internalized this narrative that maybe I just hadn’t planned early enough, and should have had more of an emergency buffer to address sudden issues like the Canadian dollar plummeting.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/i-had-to-sell-1000-stickers-to-afford-the-gres-and-it-took-me-2-years-1182e463811d

[magpiequotenest]

I bought new glasses. I bought new glasses, and they look exactly like my old ones.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/there-is-comfort-in-sameness-9c3b4337898e

[magpiequotenest]

To fit in and be safe, I have had to hide portions of myself, political or cultural.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/you-are-not-one-of-us-484ed9b762

[magpiequotenest]

Summary Wibbly wobbly timey wimey time loops More shows need to be written with the end in mind Dark is a great show that keeps things suspenseful

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

I first thought the Priest was behind all of things, and had a negative view of him the entire season despite having most of it debunked. He just had a spooky vibe. Then, we learned about Claudia and her journey into learning about the Winden caves, and how she became one of the two travellers really trying to change things up for some greater reason. Then we learned that Adam was Jonas (the only German phrase I learned from this show was ich bin du) and that in a way, Adam and Claudia were fighting each other the entire way. But that wasn’t true, Claudia wasn’t Adam’s counterpart. He was renamed as Adam for a reason, because there would be an Eve. We learn about how alternate Martha becomes Eve and they eternally loop into trying to preserve vs. destroy the loop. And after all of this, after I thought the season had already reached the ending, we learn about the third world from Claudia. We learn about how the clockmaker was the whole reason behind this, and how neither Adam nor Eve’s world is the original.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

My belief of “who” was behind the time and world loops also kept changing, and when I thought I figured everything out, I hadn’t. I was “shook” on five separate occasions.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

There are also no loopholes found so far, as the entire show was written with the end in mind. More shows need to self-contained like this, instead of letting the ending drag on and end with an underwhelming story.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

Each piece of intertwining complicatedness was introduced in bite-sized pieces so viewers could catch up.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

With three seasons matching the theme of threes in the entire season, each season we saw the introduction of increasingly more complicated information. First, we learn of time travel; then we learned of the three complicating time loops; finally we learned of the three alternate worlds.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

Charlotte has two daughters: Francesca and Elisabeth. Elisabeth marries The Priest Guy, and the two have Charlotte. Charlotte marries Peter Doppler, and has Francesca. The crowning jewel of this relationship is when moderately older Elisabeth goes to steal baby Charlotte away from younger new mother Elisabeth with adult Charlotte so that they could send baby Charlotte to live with the clockmaker. A lot was going on there.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

Jonas meets alt Martha and has The Unknown, who goes back in time to father Tronte Nielsen with Agnes Nielsen, who fathers Ulrich Nielsen, who fathers Mikkel, Martha and Magnus Nielsen; Mikkel gets sent back in time and ends up marrying Hannah, and has Jonas. Jonas is his own grandfather.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

Hannah was bullied all her life by Katharina, who went back in time to impersonate Katharina as Ulrich’s wife to see him in prison. She becomes pregnant and meets Helene Albers as a child, waiting to get an abortion. Helene Albers later names her own daughter, Katharina, after Katharina, yep.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

I finished Dark last weekend and I need to write all my thoughts down because surely I WILL FORGET.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/three-thoughts-about-dark-a44a46cb89e5

[magpiequotenest]

For example, grant applications often have a statement of intent process prior to a full grant application. Could something similar stand in the place of GREs? That’s only one of many possible suggestions. I hope that in addressing systemic biases in the graduate application process, we do not stop at dismissing suggestions that don’t work — but rather keep pushing until we have a viable alternate option of addressing the underlying problem.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/i-had-to-sell-1000-stickers-to-afford-the-gres-and-it-took-me-2-years-1182e463811d

[magpiequotenest]

What I hear is that some committees still value the GRE because it shows some kind of initial intent to prepare. I can see why committees value it, and think that future steps should point to finding other ways to measure this same value. Other ways that don’t systematically discriminate based on socioeconomic status, gender or race.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/i-had-to-sell-1000-stickers-to-afford-the-gres-and-it-took-me-2-years-1182e463811d

[magpiequotenest]

It’s in stories of lived experiences that we understand a late GRE might not have been due to “lack of planning”, but due financial situations that were already mitigated at full effort. It’s hard to understand how something as small as $25 could have been the final straw.

https://medium.com/the-brain-is-a-noodle/i-had-to-sell-1000-stickers-to-afford-the-gres-and-it-took-me-2-years-1182e463811d