Mentor Yourself

What I want from Mentor Yourself is to be a resource for ambitious people who have never had the benefit of being mentored. Maybe you didn’t have a big brother, maybe you grew up in a single parent household. Maybe you went to college, maybe you didn’t. Perhaps your teachers and professors never showed you what that piece of paper could really do for you or perhaps your first boss didn’t take the time out to show you the tricks to your particular trade. It’s even possible you had one or all of these things and were ultimately let down. The truth is that knowledge is power and without the tools to empower ourselves, we’ll never truly be in control of the lives we live or the life we want. This is for highly motivated people who can appreciate that there’s more to success than what you’re taught in school and that the path to true education is one that you have to build on your own.

[supersonicart]

Drawing Academy’s Free Drawing Video Lessons.

Sponsoring Supersonic this week is the online artist teaching resource Drawing Academy and they’re offering several free, online video drawing classes for Supersonic readers (Plus more to come, stay tuned).  The free classes also come with other valuable materials such as free eBooks, guides and art albums.

To sign up and receive your free art lessons simply head over to Drawing Academy.

[tbhstudying]

do your research before reading the book, it’s always a good idea to look up the author and when the book was written and published. by looking that up, you can learn about the historical context of the book and get a deeper understanding of the plot, characters, and the author’s purpose behind reading the book.

read the intro and summary of the book before beginning if there’s an introduction to the book, be sure to read that for any relevant information that may help you analyze the book. find a summary of the book online to prepare yourself for a good reading. i know, i know, it feels like a bit of a letdown if you know the ending beforehand, but without it, you may get caught up in the plot and lose the important thematic details of the book. it’ll allow you to read the book with an open mind.

figure out what you need to do do you have a list of vocabulary for the book? find out each definition. do you need to analyze a character? get a sheet of paper and get ready to take notes on the characters. do you need to write about the theme? get post-it notes and mark the quotes that you think are relevant to the plot. either way, just be prepared for what you have to do with the book.

don’t highlight; write oftentimes, people will simply highlight pretty much anything in the book. i’m not a huge fan of the highlighting - annotating method because you may want to sell the book later on or reread it without bombarding your eyes with bright color. the highlighter ink may even bleed to the other side of the paper. i think that it just ruins the reading experience and future potential. it also encourages passive reading. instead, use sticky notes or sticky tabs to write down notes and place them in the book. keep a piece of paper by your side to take note of every character’s name and important plot points. using a color key with sticky notes may be helpful as well. if you must, i would suggest underlining with a pencil so that you can erase it after you’re done with the whole process.

take copious notes write down the words that you don’t know in the story and look them up. write down characters and their changes over the course of the book. write down times / settings when they show up. write down important quotes and passages + page numbers. write down every single thought that you have about the book because it may become relevant later on.

make a summary of the chapter after you finish one i personally like doing the summaries on index cards and then put them in order after i finish the entire book. i can then look through them to see the plot progression and character growth over the course of the story without hunting through the book or my notes.

wait until you finish the entire paragraph / passage before writing notes if you stop halfway, you may miss important information that’s revealed at the end of the passage. besides, you may develop new thoughts after reading the entire passage / paragraph.

look for literary devices you know, your metaphors, allusions, similes, personifications, etc etc etc. it’s good to be familiar with literary devices because they will often give an insight to the story and frequently become relevant to questions on the test / writing things. here’s a good site on literary devices.

hope this helped and good luck! if you’d like to request a post, go here and if you’d like to see more helpful posts, go here !! thanks :)

[ethiopienne]

The Lenny Interview: Kimberly Drew, aka @MuseumMammy

Meet the Instagram Star Elevating Black Contemporary Art. - interview by Doreen St. Félix

​Twenty-five-year-old Kimberly Drew is one of the art world’s rising new tastemakers, specifically because her work is centered on dismantling the art world’s old gates. In July, Drew was named online community producer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She manages content across the Met’s Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, digital portals that serve as accessible windows to the museum’s collection and exhibitions. In other words, Drew gives an art education every day.

Before building community relations at the Met, Drew gained world-renowned status directing two influential Internet art channels: @MuseumMammy, her personal Instagram, which has over 82,000 followers, and the Black Contemporary Art Tumblr, one of the most comprehensive collections of black art online. Drew’s meticulous curation of Black Contemporary Art has solidified the site as a digital, living museum, recording influential black artists around the world. Curators, art administrators, and enthusiasts alike look to Drew’s forward-thinking Internet projects, which are on pace to restructure the whiteness inherent to the contemporary-art canon.

In both URL and IRL, Drew’s work centers on the complicated intersection between race, tech, and art. In our conversation below, Drew and I talk about what it means to be a black citizen in a supposedly borderless Internet landscape, the black technologists turning the hacking community on its head, and the anxiety that comes with building personal online worlds.

[acollectedgentleman-deactivated]

A Collected Perspective #13:

INVEST IN YOU

Investing in yourself may be the best decision you’ll ever make. It’s sad that we live in a society that puts material things over ones self. We worry more about our cars, clothes, cellphones upkeep than we do about ourselves. At 26 years old I’m learning to invest time into things that will bring out the best in me. From the books I read, the food I eat, and even the way I think. The choices we make now, determines what we become in the future. I know life can be hell, but  the moment you give up is the moment you fail. So here are some ways I began to invest in myself:

Lead By Example. Practice what you preach. Inhale all that positivity and exhale the negativity. Work towards accomplishing your dreams and goals, whether it’s getting your degree or dream job. Obtaining those things will show others around you that you’ve invested in bettering yourself and that will ultimately inspire them to do the same.

Knowledge Is Power. Invest in books, documentaries, and classes that will challenge you. Strive to learn as much as you can. The power of knowledge is limitless and once you start investing in self-growth you become unstoppable. 

Kill That Skill. Learn to cook, or dance, or even better, learn to love yourself. Whatever skill you strive to learn, make sure you kill it, make sure you give it your all. 

Fuck What They Think. Don’t ever apologize for being who you are. Own it, it’s that simple. I look back on my life now and realize how silly I was for trying to impress people by being who they wanted me to be. Flaws and all, you’re beautiful in every way and you should never let anyone tell you different. 

Health is Wealth. The most important investment you’ll ever make is in your health, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Exercising and Cleaning eating will do wonders to your mind, body and soul. Trust me, my senior year of college I let myself go completely, but I had to realize that you can’t neglect yourself. Please invest in taking better care of yourself.

I Love Myself. Do go out looking for love from others until you completely love yourself. You’re significant other will love you unconditionally, your family and close friends will love you unconditionally, but all that won’t matter if you don’t have love for yourself. Believe in yourself, your dreams, your goals, and ambitions. Invest in Self-Love. 

When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside. – Joel Osteen Connected With A Collected Gentleman: 

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[malcolmxnetwork]

If we’re going to be businessmen then we have to learn how to produce that which we’re going to sell, and when you become the producers of your own commodity, you’re independent. Don’t you know, brothers and sisters, if you’re in business, I don’t care if you’ve got a million dollar business, and you’re not producing anything that you’re selling, you’re still just a rich Negro? You’re not a free Negro, you’re a rich Negro, a rich slave. If you’re selling cars, you can’t sell the car without getting it from the white man. You’re just a salesman for the white man. If you got a department store, selling clothes and you’re not manufacturing and producing your own clothes, you’re just a salesman, still, for the white man that’s making those clothes. These are facts that may sound cruel, but yet they’re facts. I don’t care how wealthy your are, if you’re not producing, you’re still a slave for your master. You’re just a wealthy slave They got rich slaves and poor slaves. They got educated slaves and dumb slaves. http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/

[jakobhetzer]

[mentoryourself]

Church!

[mentoryourself]

Okay maybe I'm late to the party, but I recently started using this to keep track of my online work and "play" schedules.  Just type "set timer __ minutes" in the Google search bar.  Whether I'm working on a project, research or just scrolling through y'all posts (most likely), it's kept me from over and/or under working, both of which I'm guilty of.  

If you're not a fan of typing you can just use your phone to talk to google "OK Google - Set timer for 5 minutes."

Simple but effective.  Peace.

[mentoryourself]

Get Better at Small Talk by Focusing on Your Idea Rhythm

If you’re worried that you’re dominating the conversation, or just not being interesting, pay attention to how long it takes you to convey a single idea or story. Use this to create a mental “rhythm” for your conversation:

I’ll define the rhythm of your speech as the rate at which your words communicate a single idea. A “beat” is a single idea unit. Next time you’re talking to someone, pay attention to this: how long did it take for you to tell Jenny that a bird flew into your house on Sunday? Two minutes? That’s one thought communicated, one beat.

You might feel compelled to keep talking to Jenny. You want to tell her how difficult it was to get the bird dislodged from the space above your kitchen cabinets, or what kind of bird it was, or about that summer you spent working at a chicken farm when you were sixteen. These things are all relevant, but they all compose a new beat in the song that is this conversation. Before you add another beat, you need to let Jenny respond.

[gymaaholic]

Surround Yourself With Positive And Motivated People

But keep in mind, nobody will do the work for you.

http://www.gymaholic.co

[mentoryourself]

In or out of the gym...that's damn good advice.

[acollectedgentleman-deactivated]

I’ll be damned if I sit around another year Dreaming  dreams, hoping somehow that they just appear - J.Cole

[mentoryourself]

You better get up, get out and get somethin....

[wordsnquotes]

Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.

Eckhart Tolle (via wordsnquotes)

Relevance.

(via theambitiouswoman)

[motivateyourselfeachandeveryday]

[mentoryourself]

Church!

[mentoryourself]

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

Mahatma Gandhi

[mentoryourself]

I'll check it out.  I mean you can't go wrong with a "free" webinar. Even still, time is money, so I'll let you guys and gals know afterwards if it was worth yours! Peace.

[mentoryourself]

How to Build a High-Impact, High-Profit Product in 7 Days or Less

If you’ve ever thought about creating a product for your platform, join for a free, live webinar on Thursday, September 24, at 4:00 p.m. Eastern (3:00 p.m. Central, 1 p.m. Pacific).

http://michaelhyatt.com/your-product-creation-blueprint-free-webinar.html

[mentoryourself]

That's all I know Don't care what you say about me (nah) Don't care how you feel about me (nah) Drag my name through the mug Guess what? I'm bout to kill these streets Going places you will never see Someone you will never be Mama say get some rest but I might miss a check so I never sleep