Not today Justin
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@what-a-wonderful-study
Summer so far: comps reading, ballet, and long hours in local coffee shops. As much work as it is, I am greatly appreciating the flexibility and individual pace of exam prep. Especially when the view beyond the window is bursting with lush, vibrant summer leaves.
a million study guides.. | morningautumn
˜”°•.˜”°• in the photo:
Kokuyo Muji Pen 0.5 mm | Writech Retractable Highlighter | PaperMate Flair | RK Royal Kludge R98 Keyboard | iCasso Desk Mat •°”˜.•°”˜
june 01, '23: catharsis//
In the times of great chaos, I shall find my peace.
01.01.2026/Thursday
After a busy first semester of my MSc, I’m excited to return with a brand new workspace and a fresh perspective for the new year.
I’m looking forward to sharing more of my academic journey and potentially launching a study challenge. It’s good to be back!
The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Because we don't teach history right.
We teach history like it's a work of fiction where the characters act the way they do because they were written that way. And not like the real world with real people who were just as human as us and had reasons to act the way they do. And that the same mistakes and foibles they had could happen to us too.
And even this history is woefully undertaught. People learn it to memorize the events of the story and then forget about it. They don't learn to comprehend it, they don't learn to learn from it.
This will be a long story, but settle in, because this is important.
I was fortunate enough to have some great teachers growing up, in a small, fairly well-funded school system (and during times when everyone still agreed that fascism was bad). In 8th grade, our school had an interdisciplinary unit for about a month focusing solely on the Holocaust. Every class taught something related to it, even math. For a month, we read horrifying stories and watched documentaries and did research assignments on the Holocaust. By the end, any one of us would have said we were experts on the subject.
And at the very end, our entire grade (about 100 kids) was broken into four groups, and we were told that as a reward for all our hard work on the Holocaust unit, we were going to compete for a trip to Disney World. Only one team could go, but the entire team would get to travel there and spend a few days in the park, all expenses paid.
The competition was simple: the group with the most team spirit would win. We were instructed to come up with a team name, a catchy slogan, and a logo (something simple and easy to draw). We were allowed to prove our team spirit however we wanted. That was it. That was all of the instructions. The competition would last a week, and short of stopping physical violence, the teachers stepped back and let us have at it.
It was terrifying.
At first, everyone just hung up posters in the halls and cheerfully recited their slogan whenever the teachers were watching. Within a few days, posters were being torn down and shredded. Verbal fights were breaking out in the hallways. It wasn't enough to say your team was the best, everyone had somehow decided. You also had to prove that everyone else's team was inferior. People started making up lies and gossip, saying that everyone in a particular group was lazy or ugly or smelly or what have you (we were 13). Slurs were thrown around. (Again, we were 13.)
By the final day, the groups were marching down the halls in formation, shouting their slogan in unison. Shouting slander against the other groups. The floor was covered in tattered paper.
I was shy and introverted and weird and unpopular and mostly stayed out of it. But those images are burned into my memory. These kids had turned into vicious monsters, all for a stupid school project.
The teachers had us march down the hallway to the auditorium to announce the results of the competition. The groups were little armies now. Most students marched in lockstep, shouting their slogans. We were seated together in our groups. The teachers dimmed the lights, quieted us down, and the teacher in charge of this whole project said that before he announced the winners, he had something to share with us about the person who was responsible for this entire competition. He turned on the projector and displayed a portrait of Hitler.
Everyone lost their minds. Kids were booing and throwing things. We knew that Hitler was a Bad Guy.
The teacher calmed us back down, and then explained that there was no trip to Disney World, and the fact that not one student questioned for a moment that such a massively expensive and complicated prize would be granted for such a silly competition was honestly kind of disappointing. This entire week, he said, was our final exam. The final exam for the Holocaust unit.
We had spent a month learning about this. About how this "bad guy" inspired a whole hell of a lot of people to march in lockstep shouting slogans and plastering their symbol all over everything. That one bad guy had told them that they were special, and other groups were trying to take away what was rightfully theirs for being the best, and they ultimately got extremely violent. We had learned all about the Hitler Youth and the SS and book burnings and, of course, the concentration camps. We'd all read the Diary of Anne Frank. We'd been marinating in this information for a month, in all of our classes.
But we hadn't learned. We hadn't really understood what they were trying to teach us. Not that this happened. But that this happens. It can happen very easily, especially if people aren't watching out for it.
The kids were furious. They shouted that this wasn't fair, that we were only following instructions. The teachers had lied to us. They had told us to do this, and now they were mad at us for following directions?
He was ready for this, of course. Calming us back down again, he pointed out that all they'd done is tell us to give ourselves a name, a slogan, a symbol, and demonstrate "team spirit." That was literally it. No one told us to rip posters down. No one told us to march in the hallways. No one told us to spread rumors and shout insults. No one told us to fight each other.
They didn't have to.
All it takes to get people to behave this way is to tell them that their group is special, they deserve good things, but the good things aren't there because those other people are taking them from you.
The Nazis were not uniquely evil people. They were just encouraged to demonstrate their team spirit. And there were no teachers to stop it from getting violent. Because the person encouraging them wanted things to get violent.
The Holocaust was not the story of Hitler the Bad Guy. He was there, and he was responsible for a lot, but that wasn't the point. Germany during the Holocaust wasn't suddenly, by total accident, full of evil people.
It was just full of people like us.
This time, it just was a lie about Disney World and a week of chaos. But if we didn't watch out, the next time fascism started to rise, we would get swept up on the wrong side of it. We had just proven that we would. We'd be too swept up in making sure that our special group got the prize they deserved to notice that we were being lied to about the prize in the first place.
That could happen. If we weren't careful. If we forgot the lesson we'd just learned.
After he'd let the horror and shame and embarrassment and indignation of that week sink in properly, he reassured us that it wasn't our fault. The point wasn't for us to prove that we understood the lesson of the Holocaust. It wasn't actually a test after all, it was our final lesson. The most important lesson.
He'd known that this test would go this way, because it always did. He did this every year. He said in all his years of teaching, only one student, one student, had ever questioned it. Pulled him aside in the hallway and said straightforwardly that whatever was going on was messed up and he wanted no part of it.
And you know what? That is how you teach history. You give students the facts of what happened. And then you show them how easily it can happen again.
Sadly, most schools don't have the resources for this sort of thing, and these days they'd probably not be allowed to run this little experiment. But I'm extremely grateful to that teacher, grateful that I was part of that experience. It was harrowing, and it made me and a lot of other people vigilant for the rest of my life in a way I know I would not have been otherwise.
It was over 35 years ago now and it still makes me emotional to think about.
Most people never got to have that experience, to properly learn that lesson. But at least I can pass the story on to you. And you can pass it on to others. Because if you think you would have acted differently, that you would have seen through the ruse, think again.
Teaching history requires such a broad high level picture of trends and an up close look at specific events and the ability to weave the two together that it’s no wonder we come up short.
my reading addon is waiting approval for firefox and chrome im so nervous. please approve my addon i think it could help at least one other person as much as it's helped me...
day 2 of no addon approval. come on all it does is style <p> elements... the humble styler...
ITS APPROVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
it's an accessibility tool i made for myself because i needed it, which basically lets you focus on one sentence at a time as you read large blocks of texts (books, articles, etc.). it offers different highlight styles, some of which use gradients to help guide your eyes from the start of the sentence until the end. you can move forward and back pressing the buttons or using ALT + left and right arrow keys if you use it and you find it helpful please tell me about it so i can have the motivation to keep improving it. i love knowing people use my tools
https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/addon/sentence-stepper/
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sentence-stepper/cfiappnihemjkaaepefjfofagcobikek
[ID. Two gifs of the accessibility tool in action. They highlight one sentence at a time for ease of readability.
The first gif shows the tool cycling down the paragraphs, from sentence to sentence, in a thick yellow highlight.
The second gif shows the different highlight styles such as; a thick yellow, a thinner yellow, no highlight at all, a gradient highlight, blocky tri-color highlight by line, and colored text by line. End ID.]
I’m a college student struggling with brain fog due to medical issues, I’m definitely going to try this out next time I’m working on one of my reading heavy courses :) a lot of my books are accessible via some website cloud thing on a browser because owning things isn’t real anymore. this looks like something that will really really help me.
I don't often share youtube videos and similar stuff but you need to watch this video on lessons on how to beat fascists from 1970s London. It's so good. Very well made, incredibly interesting, I even took notes while watching it. This video is the practical result of all us historians saying that learning about history is not just memorizing a bunch of useless infos, but it can actually be a tool.
9.17.25 | cramming to wrap everything by the end of the week… at least I have my silly girl for company
I will succeed. Not instantly. But definitely.
09/07/25
exciting time! today I've got news that my paper was accepted for publication - I just need to revise it a bit, but the reviews are very positive in my opinion. tomorrow I'm traveling for a summer school in another country, so I need to pack
pictures from a study date with my fiancée 🖤
🌈It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
good morning desk hello matcha
planning & studying
lunlun remembers she’s a studyblr —here are some pics from the last few months. i finished my german course and completed b2 level. i still need to work a lot on my vocabulary and speaking skills. it was fun though, i had a very good teacher and i loved doing all my assignments: i even gave a presentation about my favorite fictional characters! but i’m a bit tired from constantly studying and working at the same time, so i’ll take a small break from studying because i can’t quit work —yet 😳.
🎧 smb by odetari & hongjoong of ateez
