Idk how many young people are still on tumblr but as a college academic advisor please listen to me: it is fine to drop out of college. It’s great even. You can drop out of college if that is what is best for you. However. Please. For the love of god, actually drop your classes. Go to the registrar/your advisor/your student portal/whatever and withdraw from your classes. Do not just stop attending. If you just stop showing up, you will fail all of the classes you’re enrolled in. This will tank your GPA, and if you ever decide you want to go back to school for a specific career, those Fs will come back to bite you. My college program is fairly lenient for our field (healthcare) and still we have to turn away a bunch of students who don’t have a 2.5 GPA, and the reason is that they attended half a semester of college in 2000, dropped out without withdrawing, and ended up with a 0.0 GPA and 16 credits. It’s very tough to recover from that. Even if you think you’ll never go to college, please just withdraw from those classes. Depending on when you withdraw, you may still have to pay for them, but at least there will be a little W transcript that will save your GPA.
and if it's too late and you already did this, contact your old college and see if they have a waiver for this situation. some colleges will let you fill out a form and get those credits dismissed under certain circumstances, like if enough time has passed or it happened during covid.
“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”
— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference (via mothersofmyheart)
I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.
Ms. Tippett:
Really?
Ms. Howe:
They really find it hard.
Ms. Tippett:
What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?
Ms. Howe:
Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.
Ms. Tippett:
It does.
Ms. Howe:
It hurts us.
Ms. Tippett:
You naming something.
Ms. Howe:
We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.
Ms. Howe:
It’s the this, right?
Ms. Howe:
Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.
Ms. Tippett:
In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.
Ms. Howe:
Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.
So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.
The words and silences we live by. The rituals that sustain us. The poetry of ordinary time.
its still funny that this is the site where ppl love to pass mental illness diagnostic labels around to each other like tokens as some sort of bonding ritual but the second you so much as allude to anything actually inhibiting your functioning or being legitimately disabling in some way suddenly its 'omg you people cant do anything' screenshots all the way down
this trend of shitting on peer-reviewed academic studies in favor of tweeting “we already knew this was happening” is so soul-crushing. not to be an elitist cunt, but we have got to open the schools again. people genuinely seem to have forgotten that their personal lived experience isn’t indicative of the larger population, AND IF IT IS…… then you need researchers to support these assertions from a relevant data pool instead of a blog post from 2013 💀
Even if it's a 'common sense' or well known observation in day to day life, you still need the official data and analysis in order to, you know, -do- anything about it officially. Common sense can't be court evidence. Common sense can't be used for grant applications or approvals.
yknow what yeah I think that's just about how anyone would react in this situation. fair enough.
alright this isn't how just Anyone would behave in this situation but I'm humble enough to admit that there have been times in my life when I was doing badly enough that I'd probably also fumble it like this
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