#I sat down to write the essay and just copied and pasted quotes from the readings in my notes instead of starting to write | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

redthreadoffate · 3 years

Text

chapter 1 — when lives begin to collide [2.1k]

description — you and peter begin vying for the attention of a children’s books publisher.

genre — from past lives lovers to present lives rivals. fluff. angst. slow-burn.

warnings — some mistakes here and there. slight cussing. totally au.

a/n — i can’t find the op anymore but they made a post about this kind of plot. i really thought it’d be interesting to write one so here’s my take. not forcing you to read it but if you do, feedback would be greatly appreciated! thank you!

masterlist

“I can never erase my past. But the present is my pen and I can write a better future. After all, I am the author of my life.”

It was written in capital letters.

‘Damn,’ you thought. ‘That hit hard.’ You read it over and over, trying to take every single word in. It was true and it really did hit you hard. You were not proud of your past, but you were trying to make amends now, and you hoped that it would lead to something better. And that is exactly why the quote felt like a sharp pang in your heart.

You were sitting down on the last step of the education building on campus. The notebook with the quote you have written lay on your lap like an open book. You had just finished your lunch and were waiting for your friend to arrive. Y/fn woke up too late for the morning sessions but you agreed to meet them when they said they were on their way.

You were chewing on your bottom lip, careful not to bite it too hard. That was a habit of yours. Whenever you were anxious, you would chew on your bottom lip, sometimes without even realizing it. But you were not anxious because your friend was going to be beside you any minute. No. It was because it would be the first time you would show your professor the children’s story you wrote. What made you even more nervous was that they were the next class you had.

Writing short stories was a passion of yours. You loved making up characters and scenarios in your head and would write them down on any scrap of paper you could find. But that was all you could do. You knew children’s books always had illustrations, unfortunately, you could not draw to save your life. You were thinking that perhaps when your story would be chosen for some award or anything, they would find you an illustrator. That was how it usually worked, right?

“Hey.” You snapped out of your thoughts, froze your teeth, and looked up. “You okay?”

“Hey,” you greeted back. You shook your head, closed the notebook, and placed it inside your bag. “I was just thinking,” you admitted. “About showing Professor Y/pn my work. You think they’ll like it?”

Y/fn sighed. “Of course, Y/n. We’ve gone over this before, haven’t we?”

You frowned. You didn’t like the way they said it. You shrugged and pretended not to care. “Right. Okay. Let’s just get to class.”

You both walked up the steps and waited for an elevator to bring you up to your floor. Once you arrived inside the classroom, you noticed that some of your classmates were not in yet but your professor was fiddling around with their laptop. You placed your book down on the table, took out your binder filled with your writings -- and you could proudly say that you filed them by title in alphabetical order -- and took a deep breath before walking up to the front of the class.

You cleared your throat and called them, “Professor Y/pn?” That came out more like a squeak rather than the tone of voice you would give when you wanted to start a casual conversation.

Your professor turned to their side and smiled at you. “Yes, Ms. Y/ln? What can I do for you?”

“Well...uh, I was wondering if you could take a look at one of my written works. I need a professional’s opinion so that I know where I can improve on and all that. I mean, if it’s not too much trouble for you.”

“Of course, of course!” they said with a grin. “No problem at all, Ms. Y/ln. I’m honestly surprised that you came to me for a new point of view.”

“No one better than my favorite professor,” you said, copying their grin. “And I’m not just saying.” You giggled.

Your professor laughed. “Well, alright then. Which one should I check out?” They beckoned you to give them your binder and you obliged. “Oh, this is a little heavy,” they chuckled as they held your binder. “You must be quite a writer. Well, you always have been one of my top students in my class.”

“Just here,” you mumbled. “Not so much the others.” You took a deep breath and exhaled. “I was hoping you could look at The Bee and the Queen. Though maybe just that for now, I don’t really have much confidence with the others yet.”

Your professor waved their hand. “Right, of course. I promise not to pry. Do you mind if you leave this with me for now? I’ll give it back after class.”

You saw this as some sort of sign of commitment. Maybe, if they liked your story, they would be willing to work with you. “Yes!” you nearly shouted. “I mean, yes, professor. I’d really love that.”

They smiled. “Alright, I’ll check out The Bee and the Queen and I’ll jot down some notes.”

“Ehrm….”

“On another piece of paper, of course,” they laughed. “Don’t worry, even without the look on your face, I wasn’t going to write it on something so precious.”

You sighed in relief. “Thank you, Professor Y/pn. Thank you so much.”

They nodded. “Off you go, class is about to begin.”

The whole two hours class seemed even longer than usual. Your knee bounced constantly and you kept looking at your watch every minute. There was a seatwork, an essay about children and why they were more inclined to language at a certain age, and at some point, you looked up and saw your professor with their reading glasses on and had your binder open. Finally, the class was dismissed and you waited a bit, hoping for them to call you.

“I’ll go ahead,” Y/fn informed you.

“Sure,” you replied without looking at them.

As your classmates left, your professor smiled and gestured for you to come to them. You pursed your lips and briskly walked to them. “Well?” you asked. “Sorry, that came out a bit rude.”

They shook their head. “Well, Ms. Y/ln. I do like the concept and your style, but we need more creativity. I’m not saying that this isn’t creative, no, not all. But remember these are children we’re talking about. They need something that will catch their attention. They need to stay focused. I’m happy that you managed to apply the moral of the story in examples at the end. But again, put some more sugar in it. You get what I mean?”

“I think so.” You nodded.

They smiled. “I’ll give you a week to come up with something new. And if I’m impressed, you can work with an acquaintance of mine.”

Your eyes widened. “Really?”

“Just show me what you got,” they said with a smile.

“Yes, Professor! I’ll think of something way beyond creative, I promise.”

“Let’s start small, Ms. Y/ln.” They chuckled. “We’ll work our way up as we go along.”

You nodded excitedly. “I won’t let you down, Professor. I promise!” You reached for your binder and bowed. “Thank you!”

They chuckled once more. “Go on now, Ms. Y/ln. You’ll be late for your next class.”

You ran to your seat, grabbed your bag, and waved at them. “Thank you!”

Days later, you were in a coffee shop. You were going to meet up with Y/bfn and you two would be brainstorming on how to make your story better. You already had a concept, you just needed to write down how you were going to execute it. Luckily, your best friend knew you all too well.

You had just gotten the tray with both yours and your best friend’s drink -- because really, you two knew each all too well, too. The place was packed and you had a hard time looking for a vacant table. When you did spot one, as soon as you reached it, another person had arrived as well.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were eyeing the table, too.”

You looked to your side to see a tall, blonde boy with very nice blue eyes. He, too, was holding a tray with two drinks. “You can have it,” you said. You didn’t know why but you were feeling a little bit bitter. “It’s fine.”

“No, no, please. Take it.” He tilted his head to gesture to the table. “It’s fine. I’ll just stay by the bar. My sister wouldn’t be here for a while, anyway.”

You brightened a little. “Neither is my friend.”

He smiled. “So…?”

You blushed a little. “I...I guess we can share for now?”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’d be nice.” He waved his hand to allow you to sit first. As soon as you both placed your trays on the table and sat down, he introduced himself. “I’m Peter.” He held up his hand for you to shake.

“Y/n,” you replied and shook his head.

“Do I know you from somewhere, madam?” he asked.

“Does that line always work for you, sir?” you giggled and rolled your eyes.

He had nice hands. A little calloused but still nice. “I...um...do you live around here?” The shop you were in was inside a subdivision and you haven’t seen anyone as beautiful as him. ‘Oh shut up.’ You were always around thanks to your best friend living around the corner and you pretty much have seen everyone.

He shook his head. “My sister has a friend who lives here. I was in the area and she said we should all hang out for coffee.”

“Oh.” You nodded. “My best friend lives around here. I’m always here. Maybe that’s why I don’t recognize you.”

He nodded. “I’m from the other side of town, actually. Well, my job brings me everywhere so I guess it depends.” He chuckled as did you. “I’m an engineer.”

“Education grad student,” you said. “I work part-time as a PA for my parents. I mean, I was willing to do it for free since they are my parents but they sort of bribed me and said they’d be paying my tuition instead, so….” You didn’t know why this was embarrassing for you to admit.

“Mind if I ask what kind of business your parents run?”

“It’s a multinational company.” ‘Stop being embarrassed, it’s the truth for goodness sake.’ “Y/cn.”

“Oh! Yeah! I know that.”

You forced a smile. “Yup.” You two became silent and you began chewing on your bottom lip but you immediately stopped. It was getting a bit awkward so you decided to get your drink and tried to open it. Unfortunately, it was sealed too tight. Peter could definitely see you struggling, he offered for him to try and held out his hand.

When you gave it to him, you came into contact with his skin.

“It worked on you, didn’t it?” he said with a goofy grin.

You laughed at his confidence. “Not really.”

“Ah! But that usually means it did but not so much.”

You scoffed. “It means no.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well you should.”

Once he was able to open it, he gave it back to you. Your pinky touched his index finger.

“Oh stop it!” You stomped your foot and folded your arms.

“That’s not very lady-like,” he said.

“I don’t care.” You stuck up your nose. “You are impossible.”

“I would like to say that I am impossible to others. I’m always possible when it comes to you.”

“For some strange reason that makes sense.”

He chuckled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get your dress dirty. No need to get all stubborn with me.”

You pouted. “I am not being stubborn.”

“Oh yes, you are.”

You sighed in frustration. “You are impossible, Peter Pevensie.”

“Thank you.” You took a sip and subtly watched him drink his. “I didn’t expect them to take this long.”

“Same,” he murmured. He checked his phone and excused himself.

You watched him leave and then you were left alone. You thought of the surge of electricity that you felt whenever you came into contact with one another. Did he feel it, too? Goosebumps crept up to you and you shuddered. “Stop it, Y/n.”

Peter came back and smiled. “They’re almost here.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Then you realized how that may have sounded. “Not that I didn’t enjoy your company, Peter.”

He chuckled. “Don’t worry about it.”

‘And I like your company a little too much, even if it did get a bit awkward.’

The door of the store opened and you saw your best friend enter.

“Oh, there's Y/bfn,” you said. You waved your hand for them to see you. Your best friend found your signal and walked up to you with a smile.

“Ah, and there’s my sister,” Peter announced. Behind your best friend was another girl around your age. She was very pretty. “Oh.”

You looked at him as he said that. There was a slight tone to it but you couldn’t figure out what. You looked back at your best friend. “Oh.”

#the chronicles of narnia #narnia #peter pevensie #peter pevensie x reader #peter pevensie x you #peter pevensie x y/n #peter pevensie fanfiction #peter pevensie imagine #peter pevensie imagines #type: eve writes

47 notes · View notes

offbrandmercyplates · 4 years

Text

And Another One Gets a Post!

Ms. Emmibee: I’m tired and my back hurts.

Me: Hmm, I can’t as of yet teleport over-the-counter pain medicine and soft things to unknown locations with my mind. How can I help?

Me: Wait.

Me: There is a soft thing I can sort of teleport.

And here it is!

Sooo, I’ve been on a bit of a lazy streak this past week or so, so I figured I should actually do something productive, and what better way to be productive than to make a gift for someone? Thus, this is here.

I’ll also be posting this to my fanfiction account… AND my brand-new Archive Of Our Own account! Yeah, I finally did the thing and got an account. If I can figure out how to post the story right, then it’ll definitely be up today! Thanks once more plus infinity to Emmibee to inviting me and letting me write and post these and just generally being a really cool person!

If you’ve seen the picture that this story is based on, then you’ll definitely recognize the title. Speaking of things, but not entirely, here are some “warnings”:

Contains fluff and, like, one sort-of quote from Homestuck and Spongebob season 1, but I don’t know what episode. Read at your own risk.

Maximum Yearn

“Something on your mind, Dr. Gaster?” Emmibee asked the skeleton sitting across from her. He had been alternating between sneaking glances at her and staring intently into his coffee cup ever since she had sat down at the kitchen table that morning. Clearly, he was thinking hard about something, but what?

It took him a second to register what she had said, and he blinked his good eye socket at her. “There is always something on my mind,” he said simply. “My mind is a fascinating puzzle that I continue to improve on a daily basis with my incredible skills and accomplishments.”

“That, you do,” Emmi said with a light laugh.

He raised a bone brow at her. “I was being serious.”

“I know.”

He continued to look at her for a moment, at first with a bit of a hard expression, but slowly, it began to soften to one of neutral content. His two-second stare became a four-second stare, and Emmi turned her attention to her tea cup. She sipped the golden flower tea Asgore had gifted her on her first day in the Underground. The flavor was wonderful, a little like a sweet and floral oolong with natural hints of cream and honey.

She could still feel the doctor’s gaze on her. She wasn’t sure how one could “feel” a gaze without seeing it, but it felt… calculating, but not cold. Analytical, yet anticipatingly fascinated. Yes, anticipation. That was the emotion she could feel from him. A hint of apprehension and nervousness, all hiding an eagerness to learn, to expand. What a way with words I have this morning, she thought to herself. I’d better get to the bottom of why he’s looking at me before I write a whole creative essay.

She had just raised her gaze and opened her mouth when Gaster beat her to the chase. “There is something I must do.”

She cocked her head at him. “Must do?” He hummed in agreement. “And what might that be?”

He set his elbow on the table and raised his hand, the palm (or lack thereof) facing her. “Hold your hand like this.”

Slowly, she copied his position. “Why?”

“No questions.” He proceeded to stare at her hand for another couple of seconds. Emmi watched his eye socket shift slightly from side to side, taking in the sight. She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this. Sure, Gaster could be a bit… odd, for lack of a better word, but he usually had a reason for what he did, even if his logic was just as odd as he was (again, for lack of a better word).

What could this be about? She ran through the possibilities: maybe he was trying to tell if her body was real or some sort of illusion created by her human SOUL? Or maybe he was trying to see if she had a nervous tic of some kind, so he’d know if she was feeling one way or the other? Both seemed like they could be it, but they didn’t seem to match the emotion she felt from him. So what—?

Without warning, Gaster pressed his hand against Emmi’s, hard and suddenly enough to create a soft clapping sound, but not enough to hurt. She did jump a bit, though. A very tiny part of her mind wondered how his hand had made such a sound without a palm. The rest of her mind was thinking, “hand”.

Gaster was now staring at their pressed-together hands, and she looked as well. His hand was much larger; the tip of her longest finger just touched the top of the hole in his palm. He fingers were long and slender, which was probably good for dealing with delicate machinery. And it was so warm.

So warm and comforting, in fact, that she nearly missed what he said. “…just as I thought,” he was saying.

She leaned forward across the table, inadvertently pressing their hands closer together. “What do you mean?”

“It’s increasingly obvious,” he continued, seeming to ignore her. “We can deny it no longer.”

“What? What?!” The anticipation was going to set Emmi’s wings aflutter again.

He paused again. Then he turned to look at her, his teeth quirking into what, on anyone else, would have barely qualified as a smile, but on him was the visual definition of “goofy”. “You are small.”

…

“PFFT-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!” She locked her fingers with his in an effort to keep herself from falling face-first onto the table and out of her chair.

“I’m perfectly serious,” Gaster said. His teeth quirked a little more, sending her into another series of loud guffaws. “Honestly, you can be so strange. Why in the world would you be laughing?”

Emmi wheezed. She probably would have kept on going for an hour, had she not felt something press against the back of her hand between her fingers. She looked up and saw that Dr. Gaster had also locked his fingers with hers. Their hands were now clasped. They were holding hands. We’re doing this, man, Emmi thought, we’re making this happen. In all honesty, if she could just have a single minute of this, every day, for the rest of her life, then deciding to come to this world was already more than worth it. And it could only go uphill from here.

Unfortunately, it was not meant to last. Gaster blinked suddenly and pulled his hand away, staring at her in a way she couldn’t describe. Definitely not that same, goofy warmth from before, though. Someday, Gaster. Someday.

“I have work,” Gaster said sharply, standing up. He grabbed his coffee mug and stared at it. “It’s cold,” he stated. He then downed the coffee in one gulp. “It was cold.”

“Shame.”

Gaster hurried around the kitchen, shoving his arms into his lab coat and slinging his work bag over his shoulder. Emmi watched him scurry, still in a good mood despite the hand holding being cut short. “I think I’ll spend the day at the Librarby,” she said nonchalantly.

“Library,” Gaster corrected. “They made a mistake when painting the sign.”

“I know. So… can I, you know, do that?”

“Do what you will. Just don’t talk to anyone.”

“I’m not going to ignore someone if they say ‘hello’, Dr. Gaster.”

He gave her a look before sighing in defeat. “Only talk to someone if they engage first.”

Emmi grinned at him. “Thanks, Dr. Gaster.”

His free hand practically flew to adjust his glasses, and he seemed a bit too distracted to notice at the moment. “Mm. I’ll pick you up when I get back from… work.”

“Say ‘hi’ to the boys for me,” she wanted to say, but figured that would just redact everything that happened just now. Instead, she said, “okay. Bye, doctor.”

He hummed in acknowledgement and hurried out the door, slamming it behind him out of a need for speed rather than a need to express intense emotion.

Emmi settled into the quiet of the house for a moment, then looked at her tea. “It’s probably cold,” she said aloud. She drank the tea in one gulp. “It was cold.”

After putting the cups in the sink, she grabbed an energy bar out of the fridge and put on her coat. Time to read up on monster history to impress a certain skele-man.

***

When does this take place? I imagine maybe a week or two after Emmi has settled into Snowdin with Gaster. Long enough that there’s something of a routine in place, soon enough that Emmi still has some golden flower tea from Asgore, and before Emmi officially meets the boys. Who knows how long it’ll take to get there; it’ll be worth the wait, though!

According to this site I found called Adiago Teas, golden flower tea is a kind of oolong with hints of honeysuckle, “Osmanthus” (which is a flower apparently found on the “devilwood” tree), and a subtle creaminess. I’m not sure what kind of tea Emmibee would like, and I don’t even know if this would count as the same kind of golden flower tea Asgore makes, but she wasn’t complaining during chapter one, so I imagine she’s good with sweet teas. (After some further research, it turns out Adiago also does “fandom” teas, including a series for Undertale! However, the teas are based on characters, and none of them are a straight up “golden flower” tea. Though Flowey’s does have gunpowder. Blow up a cardboard box with it.)

Does this seem to friendly for Gaster? Keep in mind that he has his own logic to these sorts of things, and was probably trying to see what would happen when he put his hand to Emmi’s. Also, I imagine he was sleep deprived (suddenly having someone in your home can wreck your sleep schedule), was thinking about it since she showed up, and also touch-starved. Disguising hand holding as a miniature “experiment” is the perfect way to keep yourself from thinking you have emotional needs!

A part of me wondered if Emmi’s hand would accidentally go through Gaster’s hand hole, but I figured that would ruin the mood, so that’s a mystery for another day.

I saw an Undertale animatic a few days ago that just put Spongebob quotes over Undertale characters, and Flowey was Plankton, and he said what Gaster says here. Like all children growing up before you could buy all of the seasons of a TV show at once on DVD, I never saw all of the episodes or even seasons; just whatever happened to be playing on the TV when I was in a place that had cable, like not my house. I missed this quote, and I am sad. I figured I should have Gaster say this, because, soft humor.

Speaking of quotes, there’s no real reason for the Homestuck quote I had Emmi think; I just like references. I also made the quote more grammatically correct, because I like grammar. There’s not much else to say on the matter.

Cold coffee and cold tea. Not the most enjoyable, but apparently perfectly viable. I’m not much of a tea or coffee fan in real life (hot cocoa all the way!), but I personally don’t mind downing cold hot chocolate all that much; it’s easier to gulp down and you can taste it without worrying about burning your tongue. Cold drinking chocolate, though, iS DIFFERENT AND IS DELICIOUS AND I’VE HAD IT ONCE AND I WANT SOME BUT THE ONLY PLACE I KNOW OF THAT HAS SOME IS IN A DIFFERENT TOWN AND ALSO I HAVE NO MONEY/TRANSPORT.

So… yeah, that’s everything! I have to go eat dinner now, but as soon as that’s done, I’ll get to posting these things on my other sites! Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom! See you around!

~~~

I am BEYOND exhausted so I can’t write a whole long thing but i wanted to get this up so everyone can read this wonderful fic!! I’ve had a rough day today and this made it much much better, so thank you very much, Author, this is really sweet and cute and I keep re-reading it.

Since I like addressing your comments tho here: Emmi does like sweet teas! She doesn’t like bitterness, and like Gaster, she has a sweet tooth. I grew up drinking sweet iced tea (it’s a southern USA thing), fun fact.

Disguised hand-holding is the ultimate fluff.

Again, thank you so much again for writing this. Its so so sweet.

I’ll be reblogging this with the AO3 and FF links!

#fanworks #yours the author #emster #so sweet #submission

26 notes · View notes

vipclifford · 5 years

Text

dazed and confused pt.4

A/N: this was very self indulgent but idc

Calum’s fingers bounced upon the keyboard, none being pressed, leaving the document blank before his eyes. His copy of Les Miserables laid open by the side of his laptop, endless annotations and highlights filling up the novel. He flicked through its pages, looking for a suitable topic to write his essay about. Literature was fucking difficult.

Most thought to focus on the revolution, or Valjean’s character development over the chapters, but Calum wanted something else. Something creative. Something to show his professor he was truly invested in the course.

His phone buzzed, Calum’s brows furrowing st the sound. He was certain he had turned the sound off as an attempt to remove distractions. On the screen was a message from his mother. His daily Bible quote.

Calum sighed, hand rubbing over his face before setting the phone back down where he found it. He still hadn’t told his mother about Noah.

It was only natural, he thought. His mother was a devout catholic, attending mass every Sunday morning and helping out her Christian community whenever she could. A necklace with a wooden cross rested permanently on her collarbone. Growing up, his mother had started a small group with her close friends who had children around his age, making them meet weekly to discuss the word of God. He didn’t hate it, having eventually found friendship between the other teenagers in the group. It just wasn’t his favourite thing to do.

But now Calum was in college and he had just turned 19, and he felt so different from the young boy who had his communion for the first time.

He knew that his mother finding out about Noah would shatter her heart. He knew of the disappointment and shame he would bring onto his family. He knew that it could also sever the ties he had with them. He would be alone.

“Calum,” Michael spoke excitedly as he barged into his room. “My bro, my best friend, the coolest guy I know.”

“What do you want,” he replied monotonously, not looking up from the pages of his book. He was clever enough to see through his endless string of compliments.

“Crystal’s coming over tonight,” he explained, sitting down on the edge of his roommate’s bed. “So, you know. I think you might rather sleep somewhere else tonight, if you know what I mean,” Michael smirked, meeting Calum’s unamused look.

“You guys are like rabbits,” he complained, nose scrunching up in disgust .

“Trust me when I say that if you liked women you’d understand.” Calum simply rolled his eyes at his words, saving his blank word document before closing his laptop. “So?”

“I could probably crash at Noah’s if he’s not busy, I don’t know,” he shrugged, grabbing his phone. He swiped left on the notification from his mother, leaving his lockscreen on display. It was a picture of himself and Noah. His lips were happily pressed against Noah’s cheek as his boyfriend laughed about something he couldn’t quite remember. It was one of his favourite pictures.

“He’s literally in love with you, of course he’ll let you stay over,” Michael said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was.

“No he’s not,” Calum answered all too quickly. It was Michael’s turn to roll his own eyes, unwilling to listen to his weekly speech about how much he rejected love. How it’s all just chemicals in the brain, loading you up with enough serotonin to make you delusional.

“Whatever, just piss off tonight, yeah?”

Calum twirled the metal spoon mechanically around in his cup of coffee. It was barely considered a coffee, for it was loaded up with enough milk and sugar to mask its bitter taste. Whatever Noah was talking about was going in one ear and out of the other, completely merging into background noise. Instead he watched the small tornado in his drink.

“You alright?”

He looked up to meet concerned eyes staring back at him. Calum nodded, taking a sip from the hot drink. ‘Still bitter,’ he thought, nose scrunching up slightly in disgust.

“My mind is just elsewhere, sorry,” he explained with a careless shrug, eyes scanning their small table for a small packet of sugar.

“Here,” said Noah, handing Calum a small packet of sweetener. He always scolded Calum for opting for sugar, telling him sweetener was a much healthier option that still got the job done. He took it defeatedly, too lazy to stand up to get the sugar he wanted. “You want to talk about it or be distracted from it?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, pouring the sweetener into his drink. He swirled the powder around, refusing to look up and meet Noah’s gaze. “It’s something I should probably talk about but I don’t want to.”

“Maybe you’ll feel better if you talk about it?” Noah suggested, unsure of how to handle the situation. Instead they sat quietly for the next few minutes as Calum debated whether or not to speak.

“What was it like for you when you came out to your parents?”

“Uh, I was fifteen I’m pretty sure, and the three of us were sat at the table. They were both on their phones or reading a book or whatever. And then I said that I had something to tell them, and my mum asked me if I had a girlfriend. I said no, obviously,” he clarified with a small chuckle. “Then I just said ‘I’m gay,’ and they were like ‘okay.’ They didn’t even look up from what they were doing. They were just completely fine with it, acting as if I had just told them my favourite colour.”

“That’s good though,” Calum mumbled. “That’s exactly how people should react. Like it’s the most normal thing in the world.”

Noah grasped his boyfriend’s hand, fingers lacing before giving it a gentle squeeze. He stood up from his seat suddenly, fingers still interlocked as he suggested to ‘go for a walk.’

Calum’s arm was swung over Noah’s chest, bare leg tucked between his. The thin layer of sweat over his body made the sheets stick to his skin. A lazy smile pulled on his lips as he thought of what they were doing five minutes prior, fingers tracing the purple bruises on Noah’s collarbones. His boyfriend would occasionally press kisses to his neck, the stubble he sported tickling his skin.

“I don’t think I could ever come out to my parents.”

“Why not,” Noah asked a few seconds later, after letting his heavy confession simmer in the air.

“I can’t imagine a single positive outcome that would come from it. My family is very Catholic, they’d excommunicate me themselves,” he chuckled bitterly, his way of trying to make deep discussions feel less serious. “My parents would never speak to me again and I don’t want to lose them because of something I can’t even control. I didn’t choose to be attracted to men and I didn’t choose to be born into a Christian family. It feels like no matter what I do I can’t win.”

“Nobody is pressuring you to come out right now. You do that when you’re ready, when you feel mentally strong enough to deal with whatever consequences that may come,” Noah explained, fingers threading methodically through Calum’s hair. “And your pessimistic ass is only thinking about the worst possible outcome.”

“It feels like it’s the only one,” he murmured, rolling onto his back. Noah grabbed Calum’s hand and brought it up to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to his knuckles.

“Whatever happens, remember that you’ve got me, and all of your friends, and whatever future boyfriends you may have by your side to deal with it.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Imply that we’re going to break up,” Calum said with an obvious tone. He could see Noah’s lips stretch into a cheeky smile from the corner of his eye, instead choosing to focus on the ceiling.

“You don’t want to break up?” Noah grinned, rolling over onto his side face him.

“If I did I wouldn’t be lying here in your bed, babe,” he replied easily, ears burning red. Noah smiled at his words, deep dimples indenting his rosy cheeks. He placed a hand on Calum’s jaw and turned his head, forcing their eyes to meet. “What? Do you think we’re going to break up eventually?”

“I don’t want us to break up either,” he confessed before rolling over closer to Calum, joining their lips together in a sweet kiss. “You just don’t tend to talk about your feelings. So anything you let slip about how you feel about me makes me really happy.”

Calum found himself back in front of that same blank word document a few days later. His phone buzzed with a message from his mother, a Bible quote about perseverance.

He thought back to his conversation with Noah while his fingers typed and deleted a reply like a scratched vinyl. He threw his phone gently across the room and onto his bed as soon as he hit send, the device burning his hands like acid. Now he just had to wait for a reply.

‘Hi, mum. I’ve been dating a boy for the past few months. I know that you believe in God and that it says in the Bible that it’s a sin, but you don’t have to be scared because it also says that God created everyone in his image and that everyone is of equal worth. I’m sorry if this upsets you. Hugs from Calum.’

tag list: @aftermidnightclifford @alongcamethedevil @5sobsessed @rainingcal @calssunflower

38 notes · View notes

filmtrash · 5 years

Text

from then to now,

the end of the year is a time for reflection. there’s a lot i could look back on from this past year, but more than anything, i want to focus on the happiest, best thing.

although my presence on this platform may be temporary, i am certain that what it has brought me will be a forever kind of thing. this time last year i was meant to be revising for my year thirteen mock exams, but i was in curled up in the only empty space in my bedroom (revision everywhere!) literally unable to put down my copy of call me by your name. i watched the movie again shortly after that and well....i don’t have to describe what that’s like because y’all know. i also remember lying in my bed listening to visions of gideon an unhealthy number of times. all these experiences were so important for me, so pivotal, so transformative and it’s only now a year on i can understand why that’s the case.

this isn’t meant to be a backstory of my life but i have always been a completely lost soul. although i am certain i have not found myself yet, this last year i’ve found something that offers me stability and security. something i’m not sure i truly had before that. call me by your name is undeniably at the centre of it all, but it has brought me so much more than i ever expected. it seems far-fetched and not really believable but it’s the absolute truth.

i’ve said it many times and i’ll say it again; reading the book, watching the film, listening to the music, listening to the audiobook made some sort of wall come down and made me in touch with my emotions and made me feel so much. not only did it provide escapism (andré’s descriptions and luca’s visuals are so PERFECT for that) but i remember thinking ‘i think i may have just found my purpose. to make people feel how this makes me feel.’

to put it simply, here’s a list of things that have happened to me and/or came into my life because of this film:

i’d never been interested in the oscars before but when i heard call me by your name was nominated i wanted to see what its chances of winning were. i also thought any film in competition must be worth watching. i lived at the cinema after that, trying to watch as many oscar nominated films as i could. this in turn introduced me to so many incredible films, actors, directors. when oscar night came, me and my friends gathered round the tv and we basically regarded it as the event of the year.

similarly, because i held the cast of cmbyn in such high regard, i wanted to watch everything they were in. truthfully, timmy was the initial reason why i wanted to watch lady bird, but i’m so glad he brought me to that theatre. i literally adore lady bird, saoirse, greta, lucas. i literally have such a strong connection to that film and i wouldn’t have that without cmbyn. and the pattern goes on and on. the reach of this film is never ending. now i have a long list of actors and actresses i hold in high regard and an even longer list of films. that’s endless hours of pure fuckin joy.

music has always been central to my life, but cmbyn opened up a wide expanse of new artists for me. not just sufjan stevens, but artists featured on fan edits and songs you guys recommended me that remind you of the movie. sometimes my playlist will be on shuffle and one of those songs will come on and it doesn’t matter where i am or what mood i’m in, im immediately transported back to the couple months of my life where i felt like i was wrapped in a warm fuzzy blanket.

i travelled round italy! to visit the locations where cmbyn were filmed! i wouldn’t have had that INSANE experience without this movie. it was so surreal being there. elio and oliver truly felt like two tangible people. the corners where they filmed in bergamo were so void of other tourists that you could almost the two singing and dancing. i know they’re not real, but what they brought to my life is and being there is something i’ll never forget.

friendships! it brought me so much closer to my friends, as we all found a mutual love and interest (some in cmbyn specifically, some just in film). i am so blessed to have 3 people that love what i love and share so many amazing viewing experiences and discussions with me! along with our love for each other, film truly does bind us together. it also was the talking point between me and a work colleague and now she’s one of my best friends and even came to the beautiful boy premiere with me. AND ALL OF YOU !!! lovely supportive people that have so many bright ideas and wonderful talents. you have taught me so much.

and now for the big one........literally it changed the course of my whole damn life. a year later im sat in the same spot, home for my christmas break....from university where im a freakin’ film student! my whole life is immersed in film and my whole future will be much the same way. WITHOUT CALL ME BY YOUR NAME WHERE WOULD I BE RIGHT NOW? so when people ask me what my favourite film is, they have NO IDEA how much of a loaded question is. they’re the lucky ones if i just mention the title. when sat in my flat in london, writing my essay on tarantino, i’ll glance up at my copy of cmbyn like.......this is all because of you buddy.

cmbyn also brought me here. i’ve had this account since like...2011? but i rebirthed this bitch when i was searching for cmbyn content. it started by me posting quotes from the book and i could see in the notes there were accounts dedicated to timmy etc, and i was thinking ..... wait! there’s people out there that love it as much as me !??!?!? i started to post more and more until i got brave enough to analyse a part of the movie. the response i got was so unexpected but again, did wonders in adding to my sense of purpose. even if people disagreed with me, i welcomed the discussion, i welcomed the communication. in a world where you feel no one understands you, when you find this beautiful thing that connects you to beautiful people, it’s a wonderful thing. tumblr can be whatever, but it’s made what it is by the people who use it. whatever has become of it since then, it provided me with so much. i have been educated, i have been accepted, i have been listened to. without posts on here i wouldn’t have known of some events that i’ve gone to, and that have been some of my favourite experiences of my life. i can’t thank you all enough, wherever you may be, for providing me with a temporary bliss where i truly felt on top of the world.

i talked about this the other day but i’m serious. timothée is a wonderful human being and i feel honoured to support him. this boy is going to be so powerful and trust me, his feet are not going to leave the ground once. i truly was a fandom kid, moving to support one celebrity after another but i can say that (other than hs) it’s never ran deeper than this. i don’t feel like im a crazy fangirl!!!!!!! over timothée, i feel like i have such a weird admiration for him like i would have for a best friend (we can only hope). he’s just so GOOD. he’s so talented but so smart and so refreshing and beyond his physical looks, his mind is beautiful. if everyone else was able to have that in perfect balance too, the world would be a better place. i also sometimes see parts of myself reflected in him too. not that i’ve ever done an interview or anything, but the way he carries himself etc just reminds me of me. i hope this isn’t me complimenting myself, i’m merely saying we’re both bumbling idiots. (also happy birthday. u fuckin rule)

so that’s where i am now, and there’s all the reasons why i wouldn’t be here without call me by your name. i’m here to testify that yes film is great entertainment and a good evening trip out, but its power should never be underestimated. call me by your name in particular has wormed its way into so many parts of my life, and those parts are the only bits i like.

so thank you if you’re still reading this, because you’re a part of it too. i am very grateful.

16 notes · View notes

ilovereadingandilovebreathing · 6 years

Text

Just Keep Swimming

Sorry not sorry. Also, this version has a read more. I swear I put one on the original post. :p

Summary: Virgil is the new kid (adult? kind of?) in school, and he’s still trying to navigate in unfamiliar waters. Thankfully, some more experienced fishies are more than willing to help.

Word Count:

1954

Genre: Teacher!Human!AU; slice of life

Characters: Virgil (Anderson), Logan (Foley), Patton (Thompson), Roman (Prince), Sleep (Remy Cordova), Deceit (Declan Anwir)

Warning for DECEIT and a lot of dumb teacher humor. School stuff. Self doubt. IDK what else.

Twain uses syntax. Twain also uses many different types of sentences- “Oh my god if I read this repetitive garbage one. more. TIME.” Virgil Anderson threw down his pen, sighed, and leaned back in the plastic chair, roughly running his fingers through his hair.

“What’s got you all worked up?” Roman Prince queried from the copy machine across the sizable work room.

“Apparently, Mark Twain uses syntax. Of course he uses syntax. Syntax is sentences. My god-” “I hear he also uses diction and chooses his words.” Roman teased as he strode past his co-worker with a mountain of copies in his arms. “So I hear.” Virgil mumbled, allowing the grin nipping at his lips to come to light. Roman could win every once in a while.

“How long have you been at that?” Roman paused at the door, cradling his papers on his hip like a baby. “Not too long. Just long enough to be fed up already. These are honors kids, for crying out loud. I know they have better thoughts than this.” “They do. They just don’t know it yet. Who’s giving you trouble?” “Giselle Wilson.” “Oo yeah, I had her last year. She’s a smart girl, really, but very much a verbal processor. Try doing writing conferences and talking through her thoughts. She does better that way.” “I don’t have time for that though. We’re already behind as it is-“ “Lesson plans are a formality, Virge. Lighten up.” “Says the man who’s been teaching for 5 years already.” “You’ll get there.” Roman flashed him one of his obnoxiously bright smiles. “I suppose losing your classroom during your planning period doesn’t help, but…it all settles in after the first few years.” “Yeah, if I last past the dropout stats. What is it? 20% in the first 3 years?” “It doesn’t matter because you won’t be one of them.” Roman replied shortly but not unkindly. “As I said, you’ll get there. As for me, I must get back to my domain before the serfs run amok.” “Oh my god, Roman; you left them alone?!” “Just for a few minutes.” Virgil eyed the precarious stack he was hauling. “They’re fine. They’re seniors. Some of them can vote and serve; they can handle themselves for 10 minutes.” “Whatever you say.” Virgil rolled his eyes as the other sauntered away, turning back to his grading with another sigh. “Another day, another assignment to grade.” Virgil had just lapsed back into the flow of grading when the tap of footfall pulled him from his focus. “Oh, hello, Virgil.” Logan Foley paused inside the doorway. “I forgot you do your planning in here. I can come back later if you are trying to concentrate.” “No, it’s fine. I need a break anyway. Papers are painful.” “I understand the sentiment.” A shadow of a smile graced Logan’s lips as he sat across from Virgil. “My AP Language students are writing responses to past AP Examination prompts, and reading through them is taxing. My students often do well, but…I do always worry.” “That’s fair. But hey, Mr. Teacher of the Year, I think you’ll be fine.” Virgil nodded slightly. “They couldn’t have anyone better.” “Unless they have me.” Virgil visibly tensed as their red-headed colleague slunk into the room.

“Your students’ scores have certainly been quite comparable to my own.” Logan conceded. “Of course.” Declan Anwir chuckled. “This place needed me desperately. You’re doing great and all, Logan, but one man can only do so much. Especially after all of that-“ “Do you mind? I’m trying to grade here.” Virgil snapped, gesturing to the papers spread out in front of him. “Not all of us have the luxury of a classroom during all periods.” “Of course. My mistake. I thought this was the teacher workroom, after all.” Virgil rolled his eyes after Declan rose and turned his back on them. “Anyway, I have a lot of grading to do. Those AP essays won’t score themselves.” He gave them a sharp wave and went out. “God, that guy gets on my nerves.” Virgil filed below his breath. “Sure his AP scores are high, but the kids hate his class. He’s a dictator. One of my past honors kids from last year broke down in Anime Club because of the workload in his class. It’s nuts!” “His methods may be…strict-” “Tyrannical.” “But the data is unarguable. His students get top scores.” “And that makes it all the worse…” “He is not a bad teacher, Virgil.” “He’s not a good one, either, though!-” Virgil caught himself and snapped his mouth shut; he inhaled deeply through his nose and unclenched his fists. “…So anyway, how is everything going? With….you know-“ “Clear as of the last check.” Virgil physically relaxed, his sharp gestures softening. “Good. Glad to hear it. But don’t hesitate to let us know if things aren’t good.” “Of course. I cannot thank you enough for everything you did for me when-“ “Well, hello, gentlemen!” Patton Thompson breezed into the room. “No one told me we were having a planning party!” “Not a party, Pat; just…a chat.” “Nice rhyme, Virge; you just might be a poet after all.” “Never again.” Virgil’s lip curled, and Patton exploded into giggles. “You teach English, silly goose; you’ll have to deal with it eventually.” “Yeah, Yeah-“ “So how are our freshman, Patton?” “Oh, they’re fine, as always!” Patton laughed as he headed toward a copy machine. “My precious babies. Still adjusting to high school life. It really is so hard.” “Pat, they’re 14, not 6.” Virgil muttered, the grievance not at all expressed in his expression. “They’ll be fine.” “Ooooooh I know, but I just want to scoop them up and take care of them, you know? They’re so helpless-“ Logan sighed. “They play on your kindness like a harp, Patton, and you know this. Yet you still give in.” “It’s just because they need the push, but they’re too scared to ask.” “Sometimes, I think you’re too soft for your own good, Pat.” Patton flashed his co-worker a grin before removing the warm papers from the finishing tray. “Soft inside; tough outside.” “Soft inside; soft outside, is more accurate.” Logan interjected seriously. “We’ll work on the tough part, Pat. I’ll teach you how to do a teacher scowl.”

“Don’t need it, but thanks for the offer!” Patton saluted. “They’re just fine with me as their Captain-”

“Don’t.” Virgil quipped.

“What?” Patton peered at his co-worker with his signature doe eyes.

“Don’t do it. I heard ‘Dead Poets Society’ through my walls yesterday. How many times a semester do you use that movie, anyway?”

“I use clips every chance I get! It really is a versatile film. I thought you liked that movie?!”

“I do, but hearing it quoted weekly makes it lose its appeal.” Patton’s jaw tightened, and Virgil backpedaled. “Sorry, Pat. I didn’t mean to go off on you like that. I just….It’s been a day.”

“Mass grading. I counseled you against such practices, Virgil.” Logan interjected. “It is not only harmful to you, but to your students’ grades-”

“I know. I know! I just….god, I agonize over grading. I start out so harsh, but then I worry that I’m too soft, and it’s all just so much.” Virgil slumped dejectedly, eyeing the stack of essays with malice. “And I have no one to blame but myself because I assigned them.”

“True that.” Patton shrugged. “That’s why I assign stuff that I’ll enjoy grading. And that meets standards and is good for the students, of course!” Patton giggled, swiping up his copies from the tray.

“But you’re experienced and just…talented enough to do that. I’m not there yet.”

“But you will be one day.” Logan replied softly. “It takes time. Remember, you just got your Bachelor’s Degree. Patton and I both have our Doctorates and years of experience to drawn upon. You will get there. Be patient with yourself. Besides….if your students’ reactions to your activity last week was any indication, you are already off to a satisfactory start.”

“What was your activity?” Patton called over his shoulder.

“Nothing that great, really. It’s basically four corners. I put a scenario up on the board, and they go to one place or the other depending on their opinion. I try not to let them be in the grey area, and they have to argue their points to each other. It’s like an informal debate, and they get really into it.”

“I do not believe I have seen or heard your honors students be so rambunctious.” Logan commented.

“Yeah, sorry about that. They’re really passionate about Of Mice and Men, apparently. And the death penalty.”

“That one can definitely get people stirred up!”

“Shaken or stirred, Patty, because there’s a difference.”

“Hey, Rem!” Patton greeted their sub-turned-part-timer. “Ready for the day shift?”

“You know it. I’m joe’d up and ready to flow!” Remy snapped a finger, the other hand grasping a coffee cup, as per usual. “Whatchya got goin’ on here, Toddler Teacher?” Remy gestured to Virgil’s piles.

“Honors Lit. essays. This batch hurts.”

“And so did the last one, but surely they’re getting better!” Remy pulled out a chair and sat backwards, resting his chin on his arms. “Shoot.”

“Twain uses syntax-”

“That’s all I need. You’re in for it, baby boy, but it’s normal. They’re still adjusting.”

“It’s week 3.”

“And they’ll be adjusting at week 13, too. They’re teenagers. It’s normal. You just gotta know when to hold their hands and when to let ‘em go.”

“You talk like you have teaching experience. Or parenting experience.”

“We’re their school parents, in a way, you know. Or at least, we can be.”

“I don’t think I’m at that stage yet. I think I’m still in the ‘weird older brother stage.’”

“Now don’t you say that, Virge!” Patton cut in. “Your kids love you!”

“Yeah because I’m…unconventional, I guess.”

“Because you’re a good teacher who does your best and cares about them! That’s all they want and everything they need.”

“True dat, Patty Pat.” Remy sipped at his frozen coffee.

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.”

“It is. Trust me.” Patton smiled warmly and jumped a bit when a sharp ringing sounded overhead. “You’d think I’d be used to that darn bell after all this time-”

“Well, they did change out the system this year. The pitch is higher and more shrill than it has been in the past.” Logan sighed, hauling himself from his chair.

“It does it’s job, though.” Patton left with a wave, easily weaving into the sea of students in the crowded halls.

“Time to get to it.” Remy slapped the back of his chair and rose, shouldering his laptop bag before placing a hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “Have a good one, kid.” He gave it a squeeze and disappeared into the mass of bodies as well.

“Are you managing well, Virgil?” Logan asked in a low tone, making direct eye contact. “Really?”

Virgil sighed deeply and gathered his papers and pens. “Yeah. ‘Well’ is a relative term, but I’m managing, that’s for sure.”

“Remember to inform me if that changes. We are here for you if you need us.”

“Thanks, Logan.” Virgil’s smile reached his eyes as he fell into stride beside the older teacher. “So, what were your kids doing yesterday? They got pretty loud, too.”

“Peer editing argument papers.” Logan replied, traces of a grin gracing his lips. “Some of them had opposing stances on the same topic, so I paired them together to gauge the result.”

“You’re a mad genius.” Virgil laughed out loud as they merged together into the current of teenagers, chatting until they reached their shared hallway and parted ways into their respective domains.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fanfic #thomas sanders #thomas sanders fanfic #teacherau #mine #tsfanfics

68 notes · View notes

anotherenglishstudent · 6 years

Text

Uni - Writing an Essay

My uni course is, delightfully, almost entirely essay based. This works wonderfully for me because wow do I panic about exams. If you, however, struggle with essays here’s some advice that might help!

Speaking from an arts student perspective, nothing is going to get you away from writing essays at university. And if you’re doing an arts or humanities subject, likelihood is you chose it, in part, because you know you can write them. Buuuuut that doesn’t mean it’s as simple as keeping up your standard methods. Yes, school and sixth form have been pointing you in the right direction, and - shockingly - their formulaic approach is the basis of a good essay, but there’s a couple of things I’ve picked up that really help an essay.

Research Research Research! Yes, your essay is meant to be you writing your ideas about any given topic, but where have you opinions come from? Why do you think this? Do you have anyone to back you up? These things are so, so important when it comes to writing an essay. Nothing you say can be unfounded: support from a source is everything. Whilst you’re doing your research, keep meticulous notes. I’ve got a couple of suggestions for how to do this, but what you need to remember is that when it comes to writing the essay, you’re going to want to know where you got the information, who wrote it, and a whole bunch of publication details. The first method I’m going to suggest is the way I make notes: I’ll take the book/article/whatever I’m reading and write down the title, author, and publication details at the top of a sheet of paper - this is labelled as ‘Source 1’. Every quote I think is relevant will be written on this sheet of paper, and labelled a/b/c/etc., and have the page number written down with it. When I then come to plan my essay I can just use shorthand to add these quotes to my plan, e.g. ‘Paragraph 1, use quotes 1c, 2b, and 4g’. If you don’t want to write down every quote you think is relevant (because let's be honest, you won’t use at least half of them), tabbing books is also useful. This works best if you own the book, but can also be done with library books. It’s as simple as using post-it notes or tabs to mark where an important quote is; I also find it useful to write on the tab the topic of the quote or why I thought it relevant, so it’s easy to know why you marked it later on. My final suggestion is a lot like the first one, except actually making use of technology. Write the title, author, and publication info out just the same, and type out the quote (much faster process by the way), alongside a page number. Then all you have to do when typing up your essay is copy and paste your quote, along with all the relevant information.

Make. A. Plan. I am awful at this. Even writing this post I sat down and debated whether to bother making a plan or not (I didn’t) because I’m just lazy when it comes to planning my writing (hence why I’ve never finished any story I’ve started). Honestly though, an essay has never been easier than when I’ve had a full plan written up. Unsurprisingly, this is where my advice might fail you a little bit. Being new to planning, I largely still rely on mind maps to be honest. I think it's one of the easiest methods to use, simply branching off a whole bunch of ideas, sticking quotes in there to see where things fit together and your points interconnect. Very basic, but, for me, pretty effective. A thorough plan, however, is best made with bullet points. Essentially you create your sentences in a very basic form, and then you just need to use connectives and fancy words in between to make proper sentences and you’re done! I think with planning, you’ve just got to find what works for you - but definitely plan. I can’t advocate for planning enough, it will just make your writing process so much easier.

Writing an Introduction So this can go one of two ways in my opinion: either you skip the introduction because introductions are hard, or you use the introduction to help focus yourself. Can you guess which one I support? Introductions are hard, I admit, because you’re faced with a blank page and you think the whole thing rests on making the perfect introduction but - newsflash - you can edit the opening when you’ve finished. In fact, I highly recommend you do. Use your introduction to focus yourself and get a start, put down some ideas and just get writing, and then, when you;ve got a focused, complete essay, come back and edit it to make sure it fits with your conclusion.

The Body This depends on your plan essentially. Each paragraph should be focused; before you start writing, know what you’re paragraph is about and what quotations you want to put it in. You also want to know roughly how long you want each paragraph to be, so as to not end up rambling, and to stay focused. You almost definitely have a word limit, so keep in mind that you can have as many paragraphs as you like, but you want to find the balance between fully fleshed out and supported, and long and rambly.

Concluding Really, this is the easiest part. You’ve done your introduction - so you know what you were aiming to do - and you’ve done the body - so you know what points you’ve made. Now you just to need to use all that information to conclude your essay. Essentially you want to summarise what you’ve said in your essay - don’t introduce anything new at this point. Bring together what you’ve said, and how you’ve come to view the topic overall. Don’t sit on the fence, make a decision about where you stand and make sure it comes across in your conclusion, show this is your concluding paragraph - but don’t use the phrase ‘to conclude’, or anything equivalent. It’s cliche and annoying, and your tutor doesn’t want to read it a million times over whilst marking.

References are Important Everywhere has a different system for referencing so my first point is check if your university/college/institution has a preference. A lot of the time institutes have some kind of study guide which will clarify how they want you to reference; they’re not trying to trip you up, they know you haven’t done these things before so they will try to help you out where they can. If they don’t have a preference, have a google. Like I said, there are a lot of styles out there: MHRA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, Oxford, etc.. The most important thing is to stick to one style. The study guide at my university says students ‘will not be penalised for using an alternative set of conventions, provided that it is implemented consistently’, showing the important thing is not that you do what they suggest, but that you know what you’re doing if you’re going to do it. (This is not good advice in most university situations - in general, stick to your briefs). The other important thing I’d say is fill in your references as you write. Even if you do a shorthand version in the footnote and then hurry to finish your paragraph because you’re really on a role, write down the reference. If you’re proofreading your essay after you’ve finished it and stumble upon a quote without a reference, it’s likely going to be a nightmare figuring out where it came from.

So. That turned out longer than expected. Turns out I have a lot of advice on essay writing. What can I say? I’ve written a lot of them, I’ve edited other people’s, and I’m just really passionate about it. I hope some of this advice, if not all of it, is useful to you!

Moving In and Freshers Week | Getting Through Reading Lists | Having A Social Life

#uni #university #university life #essays #writing #writing essays #how to #how to write essays #how to write #uni life #blog #blog post #books #bookish #book blog #book review blog

5 notes · View notes

silenceofthemongooses · 6 years

Note

hi! I hope I'm not bothering you but I can see ur attending CU. I'm planning on applying to either the school of art or engineering, but I'm leaning more towards art. I'm really at a loss when it comes to applying, home tests,and the general enviorment of the school.. and what to do after I graduate so I was just curious on what that's all like :0 sorry for making this so long .. thank u for ur time!

OMG THIS IS THE ASK I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR MY WHOLE LIFE I LOVE TALKING ABOUT COOPER

i’m putting it under a readmore bc it got crazy long??? i’m not even to the part where i yell about applications yet and it’s like ten paragraphs lmao

so.

first things first.

i applied to cooper in the first place because when i took the tour (best fucking college tour i took the whole time, by the way. all of the guides LOVE cooper and they love telling you about it, so if you get a chance, defo go on the tour bc theyre way more honest and you get a better feel for the school than on any other tour) one of the things that they emphasized was the student community., one told me that once when she walked into the EE lab and asked to borrow someone’s phone charger because hers had frayed so badly it wasn’t working. not only did someone give her a charger, but they fixed her charger until she could get a new one.

and when i got here, it’s totally fucking true. cooper is a community in every definition of the word. everyone is totally willing to help you in any way that they can, because that’s the kind of people that cooper admits and then fosters that behavior.

now. the reason they foster this behavior is because it’s a fucking hard school. the standard course load for a freshman engineer first semester is 18.5 credits, spread out over 7 classes plus a professional seminar. and yeah, some of those are only one or two credit classes, but they still have homework and class time. it is a rigorous schedule that only gets harder. professor alan wolf (physics, more on him later maybe? i have him next semester, we’ll see if the Rumors are true) said at an engineering faculty panel that he wants physics to be moved to first semester of freshman year (instead of second) because the transition from “an easy first semester” to a semester with physics and calc 2 was too difficult for a lot of students. everyone around me groaned when he said the first semester was easy.

and this is just the engineering school! the art school is hard as hell too. keep in mind that what i know about the art program is just synthesized from talking to art students and not at all from personal experience. but.

the first year of art is a foundation year. they assume you don’t know anything, and break you down to basics. the art ra in the dorms said her freshman year was incredibly hard for her both as an artist and as a person just because she was confronted with all these other talented people and having to face that she wasn’t The Artist in school anymore. i regularly leave the student lounge (menschel) at two in the morning only for art kids to walk in, holding all of their materials (although, not anymore, since someone got charcoal all over the tables in 3a lmao) and settling in for another all-nighter.

cooper is a culture of intense rigor and stress, and there is no overcoming that. but it’s also a culture of community and supporting each other. it’s a really specific kind of school that some people find just isn’t for them.

also, cooper is like, really small. like. very small. here are some of the things you will encounter because of cooper union’s limited budget and facilities, and which you basically have to accept:

no dining hall. there’s frankie’s cafe in the new academic building (also known as the engineering building, most commonly referred to as the nab) but otherwise there is absolutely no meal plan. frankie’s has like, sandwiches and muffins and bagels and (terrible) coffee, but it is in no way a full college dining hall.

no gym. i think at one point we were allowed to use nyu’s facilities? no longer. almost everyone i know belongs to a gym. i myself visit the planet fitness on union square maaaybe once a month when i guilt myself into it. blink is a popular option. if you’re willing to spare the cash equinox is also there. crunch is the one that everyone kind of makes fun of but like it’s super close so go for it if you want.

small supporting staff. this is both a blessing and a curse. i know everyone in the student affairs office by first name and usually they know me. i think at this point i’ve met everyone in the financial aid department. cool, because it means that they know me. bad, because it means i’ve had to talk to all of them to figure out what the hell is going on with my scholarships and how much money i actually know. this is not a school where there are online systems in place to fix any problems you have. you have to be your own advocate to the administration, and as much as they desperately want to help you, a lot of the time it comes down to just making sure your paperwork goes through. good news is you almost never have to make an appointment to talk to someone you just show up.

very little interaction between the schools. there are three schools. art, architecture, and engineering. engineering is by far the most populated, followed by art, then architecture. if i didn’t live with two artists, i would never talk to anyone in art or architecture. yes, the hss classes are multidisciplinary, but just statistically, engineers far outweigh the artists. there weren’t even any architects in my hss1 class. if you don’t make the effort to reach out beyond your school, it straight up doesn’t happen.

sometimes when you go to the basics plus to get some hangers because you ordered too many shirts online and now they’re just kind of shoved in your drawers and when the cashier asks if you have a student id and you pull out your cooper id she’s like “oh! is that local?” and you have to smile and say yes and when you walk out of the store you can see the foundation building down third with absolutely no problem

there’s more and i’ll think of them later but this is good for now

ANYWAYS i have a lot more thoughts on the culture of cooper??? but i think i’m going to leave it here because this is a decent overview of how i feel and what the most important parts are.

now.

for applying.

again, i applied to and am in the engineering school. everything i know about the art school is based on talking to art students

also, i am in no way affiliated with the actual admissions department and the following is just based on my experiences as someone who applied and talking to other people who applied

also at first i thought you were applying this cycle and i was like. honey. this is not enough time for either application

BUT THEN i put an ounce more thought into it and realized not everyone younger than me is a high school senior lmao

anyways!

both applications are really intensive. to get art out of the way (sorry art) it’s a series of prompts that you have to create a piece in response to. some artists i know got crazy super stressed about it, and pulled so many all nighters, and skipped a lot of homework to do it, and overall just did not enjoy it. one of my artist roommates, however, said that she actually really enjoyed the process? she just let herself create without worrying “is this what will get me in?” and felt that it was a really great experience.

either way, you’re going to have an interesting experience.

for the engineering writing prompts, it’s a goddamn marathon. there were nine, i think, when i applied? i applied to eleven schools and i had to write seventeen supplements. the ratio of supplement-to-school was way off and its all cooper’s fault lmao

there isn’t a word minimum, but there is a word maximum per essay, a fact i discovered as i was copy-pasting mine into the commonapp from my googledocs file. i think the max is 500 words? not positive tho don’t quote me

anyways they’re all fairly standard questions. like, nothing out of the blue like chicago’s or whatever. but keep in mind that this is honestly where you’re going to get admitted. a lot of people apply to cooper. and a lot of those people will have the same exact stats as you (btw, sat/act scores and gpa matter slightly more for engineers than for artists and architects) and the way to distinguish yourself is through your writing. cooper admits you as a person because they believe you’ll add to their community and then to the world, not because you got a perfect score on whatever.

so i, at least, let myself be a little freer in my cooper essays than in any other supplement. some of them i could answer right away (why cooper? why engineering?) and some of them i had to think about for a few days. the last one i wrote was the “tell us about something you read recently”. i wrote about staying up until three in the morning reading a novel and crying. i wrote it the next day because i realized that’s like, exactly who i am as a person.

the biggest tip i have for writing these essays in general (not just for cooper) is to watch food network star or something similar. the contestants get prompted on how to hook an audience (hey, you want to do that too!) in a short amount of time (word count) and tell a story that relates to both them and their food (a story that relates to you and and why you’re going to be a bombass cooper student) like, just watch a few, and then you’ll kind of have the flow of it down, and you can figure out how to work it into your own writing

just like, really show who you are. i know it can be tempting to put on this facade, and to a certain extent you should (do not, for example, tell them about the time you got so drunk you pissed your pants) but do your best to express yourself, in either application.

um anyways i am always down to talk about any aspect of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, so if you ever want any more info on anything, hit up my inbox!

my points of expertise include the dorms, classes, stanislav mintchev the greatest math professor in the history of the world, ray’s pizza, sitting in the engineering student council meetings and listening to all the Hot Goss, and more

i mighttttt end up putting up like “a week in my life” post at some point because i always think those are cool and maybe it would be neato

we’ll see

(if anyone want to see that…… or anything else……. lmk……..)

#ask #cooper union #literally anyone at anytime should talk to me about cooper #i love this damn school #hashtag problematic fave

5 notes · View notes

misterrad · 6 years

Text

Analysis Essay - Lesson Share

Most often, I write and share things about the big ideas in education. I don’t tend to share a lot of stuff about, you know, what I teach. But, hey, you know what? I just did an analysis essay unit that worked really well, so I thought I’d pass it along to anyone who may want it.

See, 8th Grade is a real big year for the brain. Many students are becoming increasingly capable of abstract thought. For most districts, this means that students start tackling Algebra in 8th grade, moving away from the more concrete concepts of years-prior.

Anyone who has taught Algebra, or at least next-door to it, knows the process can be downright painful for students whose brains are telling them they aren’t quite ready to figure out what the hell x is.

The same is true in Language Arts class, where we start to move past book-reporty projects and sentence-starter worksheets and towards things like literary and cultural analysis. It’s our Algebra, the concept that will be a foundation to nearly all upper-level work in our subject. As I wrap up my first major unit introducing Analysis, my students are widely showing that they are ready for that next-level work so long as it’s scaffolded, and show they can thrive when given freedom of what they read and how they read it.

Intro to Analysis:

To introduce analysis, we spent a few fun classes practicing deconstruction on lots of different pieces of media. We watched commercials, movie trailers, and music videos (with one class-discussion-type-assessment around Beyonce’s Formation video). Students practiced writing down the pieces of what they saw, and were introduced to Critical Lenses (if we watch this commercial and isolate race, what do we see? Ok, now, let’s watch it again and look only at Gender).

My favorite intro day is when I gave the students copies of Picasso’s Guernica without any background information and had them deconstruct (literally, with scissors) the painting into the pieces that they see, and then create an analysis by re-constructing it on another sheet in a way that created meaning. The discussion that followed in nearly every class led to some brilliant insight on the work.

Oh, a note here about “bad” English students. Years ago I noticed that students that came to me feeling like they were not very good at reading and stuff often thrive at analysis. Also, some students who are very good at playing school and doing worksheets struggle mightily at questions for which there is no right answer. So, you know, keep an eye out in these discussions for new leaders.

The Analysis Essay:

Books:

I’m convinced this project wouldn’t work half as well if I told the students what to read. Instead, I gave them a few days to look up books they may want, read excerpts and reviews, and do their best to choose a book they were truly excited about. I approved them, but did my very best not to say “no” to anyone. I started the process early in order to give students a chance to track their books down at libraries and track down copies of books myself as best I could. I also put in a bunch of work over the last couple of years to build up a classroom library that is full of new, high-interest books that students want to read, specifically books by and about people of color and women.

The results were pretty sweet. Students continually surprised me with their choices and the lengths they would go to track down a book they were interested in. All this meant that students were, more often than not, excited to have time to read.

Reading:

I didn’t require a lot of students during the reading phase of the project. I had students write out a hypothesis for their essay, what they thought their essay was likely to be about, and suggested rather strongly that they figure out a way to track lines and quotes from the book that matched that hypothesis. I also gave students choice about how to track those quotes while they read. Some took and annotated pictures on their phone, some used tabs and post-its, and many folded a sheet into their book and wrote down lines as they came across them.

Writing:

As we got towards the end of the project, I realized that it was more important to me that my students wrote a few great analysis paragraphs rather than longer essays that were less wonderful. I decided to keep the whole project to four paragraphs, with an introduction and three analysis sections.

Again, we did some all-class practicing, reading a short piece of text together (I used the Dave Eggers forward to my book, because I really really love it), deconstructing it into an argument and three pieces of evidence, and then writing a paragraph. Students did those in a day, and the next time they came in, I divided them into two groups; one that needed more help on creating the analysis, and a group that got the analysis right and was ready for a challenging writing activity. I sat mainly with the first group, helping them work together to construct an argument and find quotes, then checking with each student to make sure they wrote an effective analysis paragraph. The other group was introduced to the concept of Active vs. Passive voice through an activity they could do in a self-directed way in small groups.

Active Voice Quickly Activity

Once we got through those activities, students were ready to start planning and writing. To get them thinking about Thesis Statements, we had a class discussion about a rule or law that should be changed. Many groups picked Dress Codes, and we worked together to come up with a main argument (“Dress codes should be eliminated”) and supported arguments (“They are sexist, poorly enforced, and limit expression”). We used our conversation to write a thesis statement (“Dress codes should be eliminated because they are sexist, poorly enforced, and limit expression”), they got over the fact that I tricked them into talking about thesis statements by getting them all worked up about dress codes, and I set them to writing their own using this planning sheet:

Introduction Paragraph Planner:

Once their Introduction (with Thesis statement) was done, students could break up the supporting arguments of their thesis into different paragraphs and add quotes from their book as evidence, then write them into quality analysis paragraphs using this planner:

Analysis Paragraph Planner:

Quite honestly, I struggle getting kids to edit (and peer-edit) well. This sheet was my attempt for this project to focus some of their efforts in cleaning up their rough drafts before turning them in:

Editing Doc

Wrapping Up

Now that we’re wrapping up and 156 essays are finding their way into my inbox (and, soon, taking over any free time I may have dreamed of having for the next week), I’m feeling really good about how this project went. If I were to do it again, I would give them more time to read (many students had to start organizing and writing before they were all the way done with their books), and would keep the end due-date from bumping right up against the end of the quarter.

That said, trusting the students with a lot of choice in what and how they read, in where they sat and how they used their time has worked really well for a great number of kids. Funny how when you give kids freedom over their learning, they tend to do more than when you force them all to do the same thing. Especially when trying to push them to new, challenging kinds of thinking, giving them choice seemed to be especially important.

Hope some pieces of this help some of you, and I’d love to hear how things go if you do use any of them. Please free to use and change any or all things linked here.

10 notes · View notes

finnhynes · 6 years

Text

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Who: Finnegan and James ‘twatface’ Potter

When: November 2017 - September 2024

Where: Hogwarts and Ireland.

What: A bit more of an explanation as to why Finn thought James Potter was a prick. Notice ‘thought, past tense, things are better now. Just a few of many moments.

November 4th, 2017

Finn’s favourite class was by far Defense Against the Dark Arts. His uncle Alék was an Auror back in Greece and as a child, his mother had told him all about the “adventures” her older brother had gotten into, some made up to simply help a child’s imagination, and some were perfectly real. But it was enough to make Finn want nothing more than to be an Auror himself. But he knew he had to work hard. So at the tender age of eleven, he paid the most attention he could in his classes even when it meant having to write two parchments worth on ‘The Doxy’ for a class assessment, whatever the hell that was. Some sort of fairy-like creature, that just seemed like a nightmare from what he had learned. The essay would be marked out of fifty; harsh work for eleven and twelve-year-old kids, he thought, but this was his first of many essays, after all. He had to get used to it

So today was the day he would get his essay back, marked, with a few comments on what he did well, and what could be better. He had worked exceptionally hard on this thing simply to impress his professor, Finn’s favourite professor, in fact. Someone who liked to make his classes fun and simply set the essays or “the headteacher would be on his backside”. The class today was a mix of Slytherins and Gryffindors, and for the most part, the two houses got along compared to how it used to be for the generation before. Granted, most of Finn’s friends were Slytherins, but he didn’t mind them. He sat near the back, and to the left of him was James Potter, Harry Potter’s son, who Finn spoke to sometimes and from what he could tell, he was a nice guy. Despite his tendencies to make awful jokes in the middle of class.

Drumming his hands on the desk, Finn waited in anticipation for his parchment to be slid in front of him, watching the teacher hand out the work one by one, watching everyone’s reactions - some fist bumping, some quickly hiding their papers under the table, some shoving on the verge of ripping it out until the professor would give them evils. Then, he got his. He was quick to turn the paper, his eyes instantly falling to the score - forty-four out of fifty. Not bad at all. His teacher gave him a small nod and a quick smile, and Finn was certain he had done the best in the class, hardly everyone else reacted well. He was certain. But that would all change. Finn was about to ask how the Gryffindor had done when his professor began to speak. “Forty-seven out of fifty, Mr. Potter! Best in the class, well done, very well done.” That was when Finn’s heart dropped.

How had James done better? Finn had worked so hard, his quill had hardly left the parchment through that hour and when he had glanced over at James for a moment, the boy was doodling in a book that wasn’t even his and was lounging in his chair. This wasn’t fair at all, Finn deserved the ‘best in the class’ comment, it was his right!… yet, it wasn’t. Then, James began to talk to him. “Thanks for letting me a copy, Finn.” the other boy said with a grin on his face, Finn gaining such a perplexed look on his face, “I didn’t… I didn’t say you could let you copy.” But James only waved a hand, “Oh yeah, I know, but I just glanced over once or twice when I was stuck. Paid off pretty well, huh?” He waved the paper around for Finn to see then and he wanted nothing more than to scrunch the damn thing up and shove it in Potter’s face.

But he didn’t. He just nodded and turned back to look down at his paper. Potter was an annoying prick.

October 15th, 2022

Though the grounds of Hogwarts were exceptionally cold, Finnegan and his friends would often find themselves outside on their free periods in order to get away from the crowds of younger years. When you got to your sixth year at this school, the smaller kids were no longer something you cooed over and found to be sweet, but something you’d shove out the way when they couldn’t move out of the bloody way. Though Finn had always been in favour of the latter.

He and a couple of his dorm buddies were sat near the lake, a place they knew the squid roamed beneath its murky brown waters in but it was never like it showed itself to any of the students, was it? He had his hands shoved inside his coat pocket since the October winds had decided to pick up since they had headed outside. Typical. He sat in silence as he listened to his friends whine and complain over an unfair Transfiguration teacher, the boy only raising his left eyebrow since for saying he was rather reckless and idiotic he did well in classes. He was beginning to drift away from the conversation as his mind drifted to other places when he suddenly snapped back to reality at the sound of his friend yelling “Holy shit!”

Eyes widening, he noticed his friend point at something behind him which made him jump to his feet and spin around on his heels and sure enough, the one thing he had always told himself would never appear was there - that ugly squid. The thing was a whole lot bigger than what he remembered people saying it was (and a hell of a lot scarier too, not that he’d say), making him take a slight step back as he noticed two people off in the distance that were clearly throwing food at the thing. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to figure out who it was but he only scoffed when it clicked in his head. “Oh great, just who we wanted to see. James fucking Potter.” He grumbled to his friends who only groaned in agreement, but Finn soon laughed as he heard the male in the distance scream, “I mean, look at him? Could he really get mo-”

But Finn didn’t finish his sentence. Since James screaming had clearly scared the squid and sent him disappearing off in the lake again, but a little too fast that the thing sprayed tonnes of water all over the place, and of course, all over Finn. Enough water to make him feel like a frigging ice block and yell an obscure string of swear words.

April 13th, 2023

Finn quote possibly hated nothing more than Potions. Only Merlin knew why he had picked it for his Newts but he knew that was the only way he’d be able to get into that Auror Academy he’d dreamed of going to since he first discovered what an Auror even was. Yet he wished there was another way, but it seemed the Wizarding World was very strict on how you could get into the jobs you wanted to, there was no this way, only that way, so to speak. Not shortcuts. Which Finn really wished there was right now considering he’d nearly gotten his hair scorched off by his partner’s awful failure of a polyjuice potion.

This event had caused the both of them to land in detention for the evening which involved cleaning out the disgusting cupboards of the potions classrooms. Finn leaving with a filthy shirt which he would have to fix for the morning somehow. Great. He was exhausted enough as it was from the evening just passed and he was on the verge of basically killing his partner. But that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen. Running a hand through his hair, he walked down the empty, darkened corridors with a book in his hand as his tie hung loosely around his neck. He just wanted to sleep. But things never went his way, as per usual.

Turning the corner, he ignored the complaints of the paintings that would yell absurd things at the student simply for walking by. He didn’t get their problem but he felt too drained to argue now. Yet the phrase ‘You never know what’s around the corner’ really came to into play right now since just before Finn was about to walk past the door that led to the astronomy tower when two people burst through the door, laughing their heads off with some sort of food on plates in their hands but the sight of Finn made the jump in fright and of course - the food went all over him.

For a while, Finn was frozen. He just glared down at his shirt in horror that was just too gross to even keep anymore. And school uniform wasn’t cheap! “I swear to fucking God-” He snapped in anger, glancing up to see who it was. Of course, Jack and Jesse, two of those stupid loudmouthed Gryffindors. Jack and Jesse, sounded like an awful comedic duo. “What the fuck were you doing?!” He yelled, “Does this crap look like it can just be sorted out, huh?!” Yet the two boys only snickered slightly since it was rather funny to them. Yet they hide their expressions when he looked back up. “What? We were helping James with his date thing up there, we were just being helpful, Finn.” one countered in an argument which only made Finn curse loudly and yell “FUCKING POTTER!” in frustration. Why was it always him?

25th May 2023

Quidditch Day. A day Finn liked. Not that he played or attended matches, but the whole student body and school faculty were all within the same pitch for a couple of hours which meant his friends could do a couple of things that they usually couldn’t - namely, smoking. For some reason, one of his friends seemed to know a person down in Hogsmeade who would deal the teenage boys a few packets in exchange for money. Rather dodgy, granted, but Finn and his group did a lot of things like this so it was nothing strange for them. Anything he wasn’t supposed to do? He was doing it. Though in a place like Hogwarts certain tasks proved to be hard so this was a perfect opportunity for him. As he so believed.

It was Slytherin vs Gryffindor today, so of course, a part of him was curious to see what the score would be since he found the opposing House to be insufferably arrogant and cocky, as well as thinking they were hilarious, the whole lot of them. The attention they got also seemed to bug the other three houses at times but Finn in particular grew agitated when in their presence. But enough of that! He was busy off smoking and that was a bigger, better distraction right about now. He didn’t get to do this often so he was willing to savour every second of it. Each and every time he left out a puff of smoke, he’d let it fade away disappear off into the rather blue sky of today. Much better than the Winter weather.

“… and I was about to tell her that I had kissed Gracie the other night, right? But she just fucking cut me off and-” Speaking of being cut off, here it was happening to Finn once again. The noise was quiet at first, pitter patter sounds that made him quirk his eyebrows, glancing around as he jumped off the worn wall he had parched himself on. “The heck is that?” He muttered to his friend, “It’s not raining is it?” He asked yet the sky was as clear as glass and the sun was shining brightly. So it definitely wasn't raining. The noise grew louder and soon enough it began to be accompanied by voices, and lots of them. Yet it didn’t really occur to them until they all came rushing past, yelling things at each other as they carried someone on a bed Finn couldn’t see.

‘Fell over fifty feet!” someone yelled, “Whacked his head right there, he did! I heard the bump and everything!” another called, others mumbling what they ought to do with the injured person. Stepping forward, there was a slight frown on his face as Finn tried to catch who it was, and to his surprise, it was none other than James Potter. He was about to start laughing, but it didn’t occur to him that he still had the cigarette between the fingers of his left hand and that it was still very well lit. So he continued to watch them carry away a groaning James Potter when he was unexpectedly greeted with a shrill voice crying, “Mr. Hynes! Come here this instant!”

It was official. Finn didn't think he could hate James more than he could, but he somehow did.

30th September 2024

Finn was quick to make friends in Ireland. Cillian, Aidan, Connor, Ciara, and Ava. The six of them had grown incredibly close within the first two or three weeks of starting at the academy, so much so you would always find them together and they were hardly separated at this point. He had grown most closest to Connor, a friendship with the two most unlikely of people involved but he didn’t regret it for a second. Connor brought him knowledge, and a calming nature who kept him in line, and Finn brought the other some confidence to do things he wouldn’t normally do. He was glad to become friends with someone like that, it was what he needed, and Finn was happy with where he was. His education, his friendship, where he was. It all made sense.

Tonight, they found themselves sat in a bar that most students in Dublin went to on a Friday night, both magical and muggle. The six of them were huddled off in a corner, beginning to feel the effects of alcohol take their place but not so much that he couldn’t think straight. Ava and Ciara were discussing hairstyles of which Finn simply had no comments for so he focused on Connor instead, someone who didn’t drink but came along because he was trying to get out of his comfort zone, as he had told Finn. Something which made Finn smile at the time. Connor was rambling on about someone in his class that had set a desk on fire and had ruined some of his work, saying, “I worked incredibly hard on those notes and it’s frustrating me!” to his friend but the taller male only smiled and said, “Want me to beat him up for you?”

“No, Finnegan, don’t beat him up. You told me you were trying to behave more and- Cillian, where are you going?” Connor did that, switch from one topic to the other without even realising. But it made Finn curious too to which he nodded with a frown and said, “Where ya going, hm?” watching the tallest in the group stand up and brush his dark jeans down. “To talk to that guy over there, I think he’s in one of my classes.” Finn pushed himself up slightly to get a better look at who it was, but all he saw was the back of someone who sat up at the actual bar himself, spinning a bottle in his hand. No clue who it was, he only shrugged and watched his friend leave.

So the time had passed, around an hour or so, but enough time where Finn had gotten more and more drunk with his friends until he suddenly saw Cillian once again appear beside him, this time with someone behind him. He only squinted but still couldn’t see who it actually was. “Finn, I want you to meet my new… bud.” Cillian chuckled, hearing the other male do the same thing since everyone else was a little preoccupied at the minute, Ciara and Aidan were making out in the corner, not that anyone was surprised by this fact. Finn was quick to jump to his feet to see who it was, Cillian giving him a grin and saying, “This is James Potter.”

Just when Finn thought he had escaped. Just when he thought he had finally gotten away from the nightmare that was James Sirius Potter. Just when he thought he could finally sit in a class and not grow frustrated by the sound of an idiot’s voice. He almost felt like screaming at the fact that he felt like he was back where he began all over again, back at eleven years old, staring at the smirking face of a twat who thought he was hilarious. James, on the other hand, only gave Finn a smiling face and said, “Holy shit, I remember you! You were in my classes in Hogwarts!”, clearly forgetting all about how he’d been a nightmare for Finn in the past. He now had to deal with this fool in what was supposed to be the best three years of his life? He wanted to punch a wall.

But Finn only smiled. Forced, but it was there. Forced as he said, “Long time, no see, Potter.”

The cycle had restarted once more.

#p03 #I DID SOMETHING #ITS KINDA LONG SORRY #BUT I HAD AN IDEA AND WANTED TO PUT IT DOWN #SO HAVE SOME TRASH

1 note · View note

natalia-km · 7 years

Note

Firstly congrats on your fantastic gcse results you should be really proud 😄🙌🏽 As I'm sitting my exams the coming year ( 😭 ) just wanted to ask if you have revision tips for me in regards to the main subjects ( i.e. Maths, English etc ) Please and thank you 😊

Thank you so much!

I’m more than happy to give any advice any time :)

This post is very long so I’m sorry lol. If you can’y read the whole thing I also did a summary at the end.

Maths:

Repetition is key, start by doing some past papers given to you by your school and get used to doing three 1 ½ hour papers. Identify your weaknesses and keep practicing. Keep practicing past papers and problem solving booklets you can find online as the new types of questions are heavily based on problem solving and combining units e.g. algebra with graphs. For revision I went through my past papers and looked at the questions I got wrong and what I didn’t understand. Honestly just doing past papers in maths after learning all the units is the best way to revise. I did past papers really from the start of year 11 all the way to the exam.

Some useful websites that I used (I just wrote out the questions you do not need to print everything)

http://justmaths.co.uk/2015/12/21/9-1-exam-questions-by-topic-higher-tier/

http://www.mathsmadeeasy.co.uk/gcsemathspapers-9-1.htm

Some content on different exam boards may vary but maths is maths and virtually the same on all exam boards. I sat Edexcel and my school offered these books that come in three. I really recommend these as say, for example, pg 51 on inverse functions in the revision books matches pg 51 in the work book. When we had spare time in class or have a spare 10 minutes it is really helpful to complete a page of fractions or something. There is also a book called past papers plus with exam questions in the exam format (if that makes any sense lol) Which is what I used the most. My copy had loads of mistakes but if you buy a new one I think it will be fixed (haha get your act together edexcel)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/REVISE-Edexcel-Mathematics-Higher-Revision/dp/1447988094

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Revise-Edexcel-Mathematics-Revision-Workbook/dp/1292210885/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=KS8EGP0PE8821S279NYQ

https://www.amazon.co.uk/REVISE-Edexcel-Mathematics-Higher-Practice/dp/1292096314/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H1KM6NPHSEEMHT303AVW

If you are aiming for 7/8/9 a really useful site is churchill maths, your school has to be registered and pay a license or something, which my school was, and you can access so many maths papers. I think there are 9 sets of three papers or more. They are really hard and take a while to get on their level as they have multi step problems and problem solving. These are really good as they start at the difficulty of the middle of the regular paper and go up. This is really helpful for the exam as the easy questions will seem really easy and the hard questions will not feel so bad.

When you practice every question write down the equation(s) you are going to use. You do not get a formulae sheet so you just have to learn them off by heart. Every question I did in class and homework I wrote down the relevant formulae and them slotted in the numbers and etc etc etc. By the time of the exam you’ll look at a trig question and know the cosine rule off by heart and it will make your life so much easier.

English lit.

oh the bane of my life. I have seen each exam vary from exam board to exam board and it does vary with different books you have been given. I studied Great expectations, Macbeth, Blood brothers and conflict anthology on Edexcel, the papers will be different on AQA and OCR and if you study different texts.

A major revision tip is to read the text properly before you start studying it in class. Then I would re read it but only skim through it and properly read the main chapters that have a very important scene at around christmas time and leading up to the exams.

LEARN YOUR QUOTES. Flash cards are great, I categorised quotes by character and theme and just wrote them over and over (but that style works for me and may not work for you). ½/3 word sentences are easy to remember and are concise to slot in where you can. e.g. Macbeth is referred to as a “tyrant”. easy one word quote that you can develop.

For english the time restrictions are ridiculous. Omg it was literal hell. When you do homework like write an essay on the significance of the witches in Macbeth look at the timings you have and try doing the essay in the time.

And to save your should learn the timings per question it will honestly save you from spending so much time on one essay and leaving none for the next questions.

In the exam I was quite sneaky and drew the timings on my watch so I could see when I had to change question which was a life saver *prayer hands emojis*

Instead of kind of learning the whole text sub categorise the information in the questions (I know I didn’t explain that well but hear me out). For example in for Macbeth my essay question was the significance of the witches, and in Great expectations it was the importance of location. What I did was categorise Character, Theme and setting.

I didn’t revise setting and it came up so don’t skip it. Depending on the question it will require 4 or 5 paragraphs so learn 4-5 points for each theme and character. When revising just learn a one sentence point that you can quickly recall and develop in the exam. Flash cards are reallyyyy useful in this. I used mine literally in the car going to school on the exam day.

e.g. The significance of Ambition in Macbeth.

1. Lady Macbeth’s Ambition is the driving force to kill duncan

2. Macbeth realises that ambition is futile without an heir so it leads him to murder Banquo

3. leads Lady Macbeth to her downfall

4. Macbeth murdering Macduff’s family is his ambition to kill Macduff and restore peace.

These are very short points which can be expanded upon. :)

For the poetry there’s 15 poems. Don’t bother learning 15 I learnt 5 and got by. It is impossible to learn all 15 but read and analyse all of them in class so you get a good general idea of what they are all about and how they use structure and punctuation etc. I linked them together by theme e.g. No problem, half cast and class game all go together. In your categories learn one or two that can be compared to anything. I learnt no problem, belfast confetti, cousin kate, exposure, charge of the light brigade and what were they like. If you’re not doing this exam board or anthology collection these titles may not mean anything to you but you get the jist of it.

For each learn the structure, rhyme scheme, imagery and punctuation so in the exam you can recall the poem you select to compare to and the main points.

Finally for english literature learn for each essay question what is needed, some will need context (19th century fiction doesn’t) some want writer’s intention and effect on reader. but putting in context where you can will not hurt.

English language:

I found this really hard so I’m not really an expert as such. For revision learn how many paragraphs are needed for each question and practice with time limits. Practice highlighting text and picking out key information and language, structure and form. Remember to comment on all three of language structure and form for the relevant questions. I think it is really useful to read chapters of 19th century fiction to get used to the language as it’s in paper one. Honestly reading one or two chapters of a the sign of four, pride and prejudice, the woman in black or anything you can find is really helpful.

Paper 2 i think is non-fiction, you can’t really prepare for the texts but practice planning the question is the best revision for this paper. For the long comparison question practice finding similarities and differences in language structure and theme. I did this over and over again for different combination of texts.

For imaginative writing just practice writing an opening, one paragraph and an ending for different questions (I got examples from my teacher like write about a time you ere scared or write about a time you had to work hard for something) Learn a few really good vocal to slot in here and there but not too much so you sound like a dictionary. My favourite was Megalomaniac and I kid you not I used it in every possible place I could.

Science (?)

I was still on the old system and I’m not sure if it is changing for your year? Free science lessons on youtube was basically my saviour and past papers are your best friend. For biology it is just repetition of vocab and systems, I used a lot of acronyms and silly little jokes here and there. For chemistry keep practicing the maths part because that is where a lot of marks can be gained e.g. calculating moles and titration. For physics I just practiced lots of maths questions? I didn’t do too well in physics but *shrugs*

How I worked is I wrote up the lesson neatly the day after the class, before a test I would review it and during revision I condensed the information onto ¼ of an A4 page (I didn’t find flash cards big enough and hard to draw diagrams and stuff) and repeated condensing of information so it got to a pint where each type of cell had their own ¼ A4 page for themselves.

In summary:

Maths: Repetition, repetition, repetition. Write out equations for absolutely every single question you do. Past papers/specimen papers/9-1 hard questions booklets you can find online.

English lit: Learn how many points per question, examiners love a good introduction and conclusion (2 sentences will do fine) but it’s not the end of the world. Flash cards for each theme, setting and character. Learn the key context, structure and imagery of a handful of poems that can be compared to a number of different poems. Quotes, Quotes, Quotes. Shove them in where you can. One or two words quotes are ideal as you an easily embed them.

English Language: practice planning your essay answers for the longer questions (spend no longer than 3 minutes doing this) when annotating extracts don’t write out full ideas or sentences of the extract it wastes time and that sheet is not marked. Just write down a few words for a point you can use. Imaginative writing plan your answer for no longer than 5 minutes, remember to use punctuation, varied sentence length, vary sentence starters and do not be cliché e.g. and it was all a dream *pukes*.

Science: Write down every formula you use for every calculation question e.g. moles=mass/RFM, Moles=volume x concentration in chemistry. practice past paper questions. LEARN UNITS THEY CAN GAIN A MARK. e.g. J or Hz. Acronyms are a life saver for remembering complex systems like the kidneys in biology. Silly little things help too. e.g. remembering the blood vessels in the heart I think VAVAVA (Vena cava, right Atrium, right Ventricle, pulmonary Artery, pulmonary Vein and Aorta.)

General: Find a system that works, for me it is just writing things over and over again. You may find the leitner system useful (link below) or mind maps. Find what works for you and don’t listen to a teacher telling you to do revision a certain way because “variation helps” which is a complete lie. Just find what works for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C20EvKtdJwQ

Also prioritise, subjects you do value as much can wait a day, for me German was not as important as maths so i spent more time on maths than german (as an example) but don’t completely abandon a subject because you will get stressed.

I hope this was of some use to you and maybe you can pick out a few things to help you revise. This year will be tiring but it will pay off on results day, trust me. My main tip is to just keep on top of work and get things done asap. Good luck with your exams this coming year I believe in you!

- Natalia x

5 notes · View notes

how2to18 · 6 years

Link

CARL SKOGGARD IS a writer who lives with his partner, Joe Holtzman, along with their dogs in a converted cow slaughterhouse outside of Hudson, New York. Picture a metal chain that dangles down into the kitchen foyer with a substantial hook and track that runs the length of the room, and a concrete floor with little grooves where blood was meant to pool and flow …

But this is hardly the most eye-catching element of their home — which is more like a technicolored compound, with giant papier-mâché animal head busts mounted on the walls, furniture upholstered with prints of lily pads and rabbits giving birth, and everything from radiators to electric strips to ceiling panels painted in bright patterns, reds and yellows. Holtzman, the designer, was also the founder and editor-in-chief of Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors, the celebrated and now defunct design publication with a cult-like following. Throughout its run between 1997 and 2004, Carl penned much of the magazine’s singular copy and wrote many articles — often unattributed.

More recently, Carl has turned to translation. Beginning in 2015, he published English versions of several lesser-known works by Walter Benjamin, including an obscure poetry collection, Sonnets (2015), which the philosopher wrote to a young man he was in love with. In October 2016, Carl published a translation of German film theorist, critic, and Frankfurt School essayist Siegfried Kracauer’s novel Georg (2016), and he’s nearly completed bringing the author’s second book, Ginster, into English as well.

Last January, when he was out in Los Angeles, Carl and I sat down for a cocktail at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, where we had a conversation about how he ended up spending his post-Nest days obsessing over early 20th-century German writing.

CARL SKOGGARD: It was a chain of circumstances, really. I was 59 or 60 years old. I had finished working at a musicology day job — database work — where I had been for 30 years. I also had been working at Nest magazine, as a caption writer and, occasionally, I’d do a feature story. When all of that started coming to an end, people who knew a bit about my writing from Nest started coming at me with projects — not projects that I would have necessarily chosen. This was all back in the fall of 2007, when I was in Berlin. On the nightstand in my bedroom there was this book called Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert — Berlin Childhood around 1900. I knew nothing about it. I knew who Walter Benjamin was, vaguely. So I read a bit of it, and thought it was fascinating. It was also very hard to understand, but I knew it was in some sense beautifully written.

PETER NOWOGRODZKI: What about it was fascinating?

It was somehow able to draw you in, but at the same time you didn’t really know exactly what you were reading. You know? It was just kind of incantatory. I decided to look it up, and I found out that there was an existing translation — which I looked at. The tone didn’t appeal to me. The tone that’s given to the persona — this kind of anonymous child who is really Walter Benjamin. He’s styling himself as this participant in an anonymous childhood in a certain place and time. So I thought, I’ll do a translation of this. That’s actually how this translation business started for me. Simple as that.

So you started with Berlin Childhood — and then how did you land on Georg?

Land on him … I did the three Benjamin’s that are primarily autobiographical. The last of those three was a book of sonnets, which no one had ever translated. So that felt good. I should add that all of these books have extensive, line-by-line commentary. They’re close interpretations. So a few years later I was again in Berlin. In the same person’s house where I came across Berlin Childhood. She’s a film student, finishing her doctorate, and she had been reading Siegfried Kracauer. She said to me, “You ought to think about translating this — this is really funny. It’s never been translated” — referring to one of the two novels by Kracauer. I looked into it and saw that it was very quick paced and, as I came to think, cinematic; kind of satirical in a 1920s Otto Dix style. Like George Grosz, those people. It was just such a fine portrait of the tumult and confusion of the 1920s, seen through this subject who is basically anonymous.

That particular history — that tumult and confusion — feels oddly relevant right now.

Very much so. God, I can quote from my own blurb here:

Kracauer’s “Georg is a panorama of those years” — the post–World War I years in Germany — “as seen through the eyes of a rookie reporter working for the fictional Morgenbote (Morning Herald). In a defeated nation seething with extremism right and left, young Georg is looking for something to believe in. For him, the past has become unusable; for nearly everyone else he meets, paradise seems just around the corner. But which paradise? Kracauer’s grimly funny novel takes on a confused and dangerous time which can remind us of our own.

That’s about it, you know?

Maybe I was reading this into it, but it seemed as though the author had a certain contempt for Georg. If not contempt, then certainly a judgmental distance. Georg is portrayed as this naïve idealist.

He’s an everyman. People generally are confused, and can’t see around the corner too well …

Do you think Kracauer had empathy for the character? It seemed almost a satirical cartoon of that person.

Well, it’s strange. It’s very true, that it’s satirical. On the other hand, there’s a great deal of his own specific personal experience in the book. He might have felt that he wanted to distance himself from it. In the novel, Georg, who is in his 20s, would like to have a relationship with a young man, Fred, barely in his mid-teens. It’s interesting — there’s no prudery in this, but he has the character experience a denouement where he finally discovers that this boy is not interested in him in this way. Of course, the boy was very admiring of him as an older person who took an interest in him — but it has this sort of comic undoing. Georg and this boy go on a vacation together and that’s what happens, he realizes he’s built this kind of castle on the sand.

But the actual fact of the matter is that Kracauer himself had a relationship with none other than Theodor Adorno. He met Adorno when he was 14 or 15. Kracauer was 25 or so. And they used to read Kant every Sunday. And they stayed friends their whole lives — it was one of these sort of bitchy relationships, you know, prickly and with ego in it. I can actually identify with Kracauer. This younger Adorno, in later life, became very well established. At the center of their type of intellectual life. He would write letters to Kracauer and say things like, “Well there you go, you don’t need to be so defensive.” It was one of these things where I always identified with Kracauer. He was vulnerable.

So how do you think Kracauer would have regarded Georg, even if it is sort of a semi-autobiographical character for him?

He gives Georg many of his most important personal traits. His shyness, his wanting to withdraw. As he reached manhood, World War I ended, Kracauer was sort of casting about, and he ended up becoming a newspaper reporter, and then very quickly becoming a powerbroker in his position at the leading liberal paper of the time. He must have been very ambitious. And here at the beginning of the book, Georg is always saying he wants to make a mark on the world. But what’s more obvious is that Georg is tremendously shy, and he wants to flee situations all the time. And, you know, this is obviously autobiographical. Then on the other hand — again — he makes Georg into an ordinary person. Kracauer was clearly an extraordinary person. How could he have gone from walking into the equivalent of The New York Times and then three years later hiding out in a back room deciding whose essays and criticisms would get published. There must have been something remarkable about him.

Did you identify with Georg?

I just identified with his general ability to be wounded by the right sort of person.

But then his earnestness keeps getting sort of put to use by other people with more clear agendas or beliefs.

He’s actually attracted to Catholicism, and I think there’s another parallel with Kracauer there. Kracauer flirted with Catholicism. You know, after World War I, everyone was feeling like the world had fallen apart. Politically it was all in turmoil, particularly in Germany, but elsewhere, too. And there was a wide movement in intellectual life and in the arts to find a way of reestablishing order. You can see it if you go to the Norton Simon Museum and look at the Picassos from the 1920s — his neoclassical interest; the placid, simple forms. You can see that impulse. Kracauer was interested in what a religion could provide — something like Catholicism — in terms of getting you something you could live by.

In your personal commentary at the end of the book, you refer to Georg as a “divining rod.” What do you mean when you say he’s a divining rod? What is he leading us toward?

He’s looking for what holds promise. For getting us out of the mess we’re in. And, also, in his case, what he can seize on to become a person, to make a difference.

And he doesn’t find that. Isn’t that sort of the dysfunctional divining rod? Or do you think he does find what he’s looking for?

No, he doesn’t. The end of the book is so obvious. Professionally he’s a fool, because he is working at this sophisticated newspaper that’s using all kinds of tactical maneuvering to position itself in this turbulent world — and he’s writing articles that are unwittingly just the thing the paper wanted …

He keeps accidentally serving the agenda of these bureaucrats.

Without even thinking, “Oh, I’ve done it this time.” He comes in and they explain to him patiently why it was another stroke of genius on his part. But then at the end he gets a little carried away with his general critique of capitalism. And, of course, the newspaper is borrowing more funding from bankers at this point. The Frankfurter Zeitung actually did sell half of itself to I. G. Farben, the world’s largest chemical company, headquartered in Frankfurt. The company was broken up after the war because it had done so much to facilitate the war effort — made the gas that they used in the concentration camps, everything. It’s never discussed in the novel, but that’s in the background here. That’s why this Doktor Petri that you read about in the novel is in such a bind — he’s trying to pretend that he’s still such a good liberal democrat, and yet he’s taking money from these big industrial interests to keep the paper afloat. And Georg walks into that and makes a big mess of things by offering this big critique of capitalism at the bank director’s house. And then he finally speaks the truth in the most significant, general way, and gets fired for that.

Right, so we have Georg as fool professionally. And then Georg as failed divining rod — I guess I thought at the end there was meant to be something redemptive …

Kracauer wrote this book between 1930 and 1934, and in 1934 he had to leave Germany and set up in France, where he was trying to interest French publishers. In the précis, he says that Georg is “disillusioned but now he’s wise.” That’s what he wanted to think. I think it is a little more artistic than that. Sometimes you’re more artistic than you can be in your précis, when you’re trying to boil it down. Because I thought that Georg, first of all, could change his mind again. That’s the thing about him, he was never committed.

Right at the same time Kracauer wrote this novel, he wrote a well-known short book about the white-collar masses, which were a burgeoning sector of the economy at the time. And Kracauer was watching them — he was in Berlin at the time, from 1930 to 1933, working for the Berlin bureau of this paper. And he got this idea that the white-collar worker was ripe for being lured by fascism. Because they had this fragile status that could be disrupted at any moment, and they could be sent plunging toward a proletarian status, without even any unions to back them up or help them.

And he was right.

Yes. And this is Georg’s situation in the last chapter, when he’s moved to Berlin and he’s looking for work. He’s been fired by the paper. There’s that wonderful passage at the end where he’s just sort of flowing down the main boulevard of the western part of the city, the bourgeois part of the city, the Kurfuerstendamm. It’s just this sort of apocalyptic scene where he leaves the upper reaches that are still very sedate and quiet and firmly in control of the wealthy. He goes down and down and down, and then you’re in this river of office workers who are hungry and angry. Ants crawling on the street. You’ve got this lurid atmosphere, and the weather suddenly changes and becomes stormy. The book ends right there. There ceases to be any further mention of him in the last pages. And then there are two more pages of description but you feel he’s gone, lost. This all relates to that book that Kracauer wrote at the same time about the white-collar worker. Because Georg is a white-collar worker.

Now that you’ve had this kind of intimate relationship with Kracauer’s texts and writings, what are your feelings toward him?

Well, I’m not one of those people who, in translating, feel like they’re in direct contact with the author. I only feel in contact with his voice and literary rhythm, and his way of turning on a dime in sentences, his spoken and unspoken ironies. I feel in touch with him in that way, but I don’t feel like I know him as a person.

Do you lose track of yourself in that process?

No, you can’t. I came up with this idea for what translating is like. You’re in a certain place at a certain time and someone gives you a bucket. And it’s filled with water, but there’s a leak in the bottom of the pail. The further you walk with it, the more it leaks and the more water you lose. What are you going to do? You’re going to have to add some more water of your own to keep the bucket full.

Does that produce a sense of anxiety?

Well, I’m at peace with it now. I just think that’s what it amounts to. You’re actively participating in what comes out. You’re not faithfully registering. That’s not really what’s going on. When I first started translating, I thought that’s what I should be doing. And I thought I’d like to be particularly careful about preserving the syntax, mirroring syntax. What happens is that, you absorb the whole, and then you can selectively draw on it when you are faced with a problem.

Once you were in the position of choosing a creative pursuit, why did you go with translation instead of —

Writing myself? You’ve got to ask my doctor about that. It feels like there’s some fundamental act of making up a whole world and making up people that I guess I don’t like or I don’t feel able or entitled to do.

Interesting that you’re also saying the particular piece of the translation that’s the most exciting is the part where you take the liberty to sort of cut loose from the author and do your own thing.

Correct. My own personal experience of it is that I’m sometimes quite miserable. These are not easy texts here. I should mention that I have one or two people in Germany who will help me with problems and difficult passages. They assure me that these Kracauer and Benjamin texts are very difficult. Kracauer in particular is very idiosyncratic, a hard nut to crack sometimes. So in the beginning, I’m always very unhappy. Do I really know what he’s trying to say? It’s like knocking on a wall looking for studs, and it’s hollow, hollow, hollow. I can tell when I don’t understand something. But then you become comfortable with it, because there’s nothing to find behind that wall. After that phase of not feeling too happy about it, you feel like you probably understand what there is to understand. And then you get to this phase of refining, and toward the end it’s as if you’re making it sing. I’m always very happy with that, when I get to that point. And then I always forget everything else. It’s like a car accident: you forget how bad it was once you’re over it.

Peter Nowogrodzki lives in Los Angeles. He is an editor at FENCE. His work has appeared in the Guardian, The Paris Review, Triple Canopy, and elsewhere.

The post “You Ought to Think About Translating This”: A Conversation with Carl Skoggard appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2legcPo via IFTTT

#Blogger

0 notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

Text

I'M NOT CLAIMING THAT POTENTIAL WILL BE REALIZED BY THE EXISTING SHAREHOLDERS

In defend-a-position writing that would be the first money in, as they have in the past. Someone ignorant but smart will come along and reinvent everything, and in the process simply fail to reproduce certain existing ideas. You start by writing a stripped-down kernel how hard can it be? Painting has prestige now because of great work people did five hundred years before someone thought of casting hilt and blade as one piece. I realized when I started writing this. In that case, tweak your product and try again. As I was leaving I offered it to him, as I've done countless times before in the same direction technology evolves in. If free copies of your content are available online, then you're competing with publishing's form of distribution, and that's what it's going to feel terrible sometimes, then when it feels terrible you won't think ouch, this feels terrible, I give up. And then there was the language and there was my program, written in the language that required so much explanation. You know what a throwaway program is: something you write quickly for some limited task.

I'm not proposing that charisma is the only factor, just that it's the only one left after the efforts of the two founders was still in grad school. What would make them say wow? Part of what software has to go through various approvals before it can be launched. This is a talk I gave at the last Y Combinator dinner of the summer. And if you just hang on, things will probably get more attention from investors in a series A round, before the VCs invest they make the company set aside a block of stock for future hires—usually between 10 and 30% of the company? Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place to look for metaphors is not in the vote itself, which is to design beautiful software, hackers in universities and research labs force hackers to be scientists, and companies force them to be engineers. Why should good ideas be funny? And yet, if they wanted is an important qualification—so important that it's almost cheating to append it like that—because once you get over a certain threshold of intelligence, what matters most is imagination. Editors must know they attract readers.

Back in the 1970s it was fashionable to design new programming languages. So are hackers, I can say more precisely. It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. But often this mismatch causes problems. As a young founder your strengths are: stamina, poverty, might not sound like an advantage, but it has more potential than they realize. Don't write the essay readers expect; one learns nothing from what one expects. The sort of writing that attempts to persuade may be a valid or at least to know what is a small change and what is a small change and what is a small change and what is a small change and what is a momentous one. In the old days, the standard m.

So suppose you think you might start a startup explicitly to get rich and the other half are going to die. TV helped Kennedy, so historians are correct in regarding this election as a watershed. For example, when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. Ditto for PayPal. Apple is an institution, and I'm just a person. If you move there, the peer pressure that made you work harder all summer will continue to operate. I do office hours I have to change what I was doing: sketching. And anyone who's tried it knows that you can't change the question. The better they are, we have a remarkable coincidence to explain. It has nothing to do with how abstract the language is. Into this already bad situation comes the third problem: Sarbanes-Oxley has practically destroyed the US IPO market.

And being rapacious not only doesn't help you do that, you stop believing there is nothing so tempting as an easy test that kind of idea. In the middle you have people who are earnest, but dull. I'm saying is that the kind of help that matters, you may not have to be the best supplier, but falls just short of the threshold for solvency—which will of course think of Perl. It couldn't be any other way. Above that threshold, software purchases generally had to be a search for truth. All of you guys already have the first two. In that respect it's a black hole. Oy. It had the same appeal as open-source hacking is all about.

You might also want to look at it. Or if they are, they are, we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far. The reason things are moving this way is that the old way dead, because those few are the best startups. The startup would be underfunded! Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. The pattern here seems the same one we see when startups and established companies enter a new market. You can tell how hard it would be: don't do as you're told. Writers do this too. This of course gave empathy a bad name, and I completely agree with him. In Microsoft's case, it might not just be preparation for a startup is so hard that working on it can't be preceded by but.

So you need the kind of help that matters, you may find that your friends are now involved in some project they don't want to bother. So suppose you think you might start a startup one day, the evidence so far suggests you shouldn't work there. Indirectly, but they all wait to invest. Programmers are unlike many types of workers in that the best ones actually prefer to work hard. Above that threshold, software purchases generally had to be by someone who was at least forty and whose job title had x in it. You do not however want the sort of determination implied by phrases like don't give up as much of a difference as having first class functions, you can use something like continuation-passing style to get the effect of first class functions or recursion or even keyword parameters. This sort of change tends to create as many good things as it kills. If I could get people to remember just one quote about programming, it would be good for angels that there are good ideas waiting to be discovered right under our noses. They just wanted to add a new check, they should. It looks weird, but it is a good tool if you want to. But elegance is not an obviously bad name is a sufficiently good one, and the content was irrelevant. But this time something new happened.

So at the last Y Combinator dinner of the summer. Understanding how someone else sees things doesn't imply that you'll act in his interest; in some situations—in war, for example, is not intrinsically tied to classes. The river's algorithm is simple. The best place to work, there is of course Google. I say languages have to be. Sometimes you start with a promising question and get nowhere. So were the print media are in the scarcest ingredient in startups, at least, that means 2 months during which the company is sold or goes public.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #stamina #writing #head #change #Apple #ideas #cheating #software #supplier

0 notes

lalobalives · 7 years

Text

*An essay a week in 2017*

Today I saw a video of a whale caught in a fishing net. A boat approaches. They think the humpback is dead. He begins to move. A last ditch effort to save its own life. The people on the boat radio for help. They know the whale won’t make it until help arrives. They must be the help. They begin to cut away at the net with what they have on the boat–a small knife. They cut and cut. The whale begins to move. He is still tangled. They keep cutting. Suddenly the whale gets free. For the next hour it dives and jumps out of the water. It slaps its enormous tail on the water. It hurls its body above the water and splashes back down into the depths. This is its freedom dance.

***

On Wednesday, in my high school fiction class, we started reading Gabby Rivera’s “Juliet Takes a Breath.” I got the students, three boys and five girls, to talk about people who have inspired them, like the protagonist Juliet is inspired by Harlowe. I ask: “Have you ever had someone make that big an impression on you? They go around sharing.

One boy says he has no big inspirations. I know him to be a huge comic book fan. He’s a burly fourteen year old with kind eyes and a big heart who is often biting with his jokes. He’s awkward. He’s been bullied. His humor can sometimes sting. I’ve had to remind myself that he is just learning how to be a brown man in this world. The world has already tried to crush him.

I ask: “Well, who introduced you to comic books.”

He smiles with no teeth. Says: “No one did.” Then he shakes his head. “No, my dad did but not through comic books. He introduced me to super heroes. He gave me a whole bunch when I was like five or six. He wanted to see which ones I liked.” I smile. Lean in closer. “And a few years later, I learned that comic books tell the stories of those super heroes.”

“And you were hooked,” I finish for him.

“Yes.” He smiles again. This time he shows teeth.

I move on to a senior I’ve known since she was a ninth grader. Before she went natural and now dons a head of tight brownish blonde curls. She looks at me and smiles with her whole face. “You,” she says and starts to turn the pages of her homemade journal. She folds white papers in half, staples them, seals the cover with clear packing tape. I imagine she has stacks of these at home. “I quote you all the time,” she says. “Last week, you told me…let me see.” She flips through the pages. I see lines of poetry. The beginnings of stories. Anecdotes. Musings about her day. Quotes from the many books she reads, some that I’ve suggested. She’s always reading. She stops on a page. Scans it with her index finger. “Last week I told you something shifted in me. I told you I think I’m more than a poet. You said, and I quote: ‘I’ve been waiting for you to see that. You’re a storyteller.’” She looks at me. Her eyes are welling. I blink hard. I can’t hide the heat in my face. I am all the colors.

“You’re the first person to tell me I’m a writer. To make me believe that I can make a life out of words.” I give her a high five.

I will hug her later. Tell her that I love her. Tell her that I believe in her. She is going to Smith in the fall on full scholarship. She is going to major in creative writing. I tell her: “You are light years ahead of where I was at your age. Just keep doing the work. Keep writing and pushing yourself. You got this.”

Later that evening, I cried at a comic shop after hugging and congratulating my sister friend homie Gabby Rivera on her first comic book outing, America #1, published by Marvel. There was a line out of the door for her signing, yo!

On Tuesday evening I went to a screening at the UN of the documentary AfroLatinos: The Untaught Story written by my Comadre Iyawó Alicia Anabel Santos, produced by Renzo Devia. The room was packed!

It hit me in the back of the comic shop on Fulton how very proud I am of these two glorious women who mean so very much to me and are amongst the best humans I’ve known. To say that I am proud does not suffice. I was moved to big fat tears, and just as I was about to apologize, I remembered what Lidia Yuknavitch said during workshop at Tin House: “Never apologize for your tears. My Lithuanian grandmother used to say that crying was the only language she trusted because it was the language of the body.”

I think of the inscription Gabby wrote in my copy of her novel: “We are the revolution.” Indeed.

***

I have a hard time accepting compliments. I have a hard time hearing that I have inspired and motivated and been an integral part of someone’s journey. I have seen these two talented women grow and evolve. We have gone through changes together. There were moments where it was too much to be in each other’s lives, so we weren’t. And then we came back. We’ve shared joy and tears. We’ve shared writing and stories. We’ve sat in classes together. We’ve workshopped each other’s work. They’ve both participated in my Writing Our Lives Workshops.

I tremble as I write this. I want to explain that I’m not say that I’m not taking credit for their accomplishments. I am acknowledging that we have been part of each other’s journeys. I want to say that I don’t know if I’d be where I am had I not met and loved them. I want you to know how much they feed and inspire me; that they are integral parts of my life and my evolution.

I remember when Iyawó told me she Renzo had invited her to tour Latin America and the Caribbean to work on the documentary. I remember when she started preparing for the months on the road and when she left. I talked to her from so many places across the globe. Me here in NYC, being a single mom, working and writing and trying to build a life for myself. Her in Haiti and DR and Brazil and Colombia and Honduras and…

I remember when Gabby told me about this book she was writing. I remember when she shared that Juliet came to her in my first Writing Our Lives class, in the petri dish class. I’ve often thought that that class was a failure. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was still figuring it all out. You learn so much in the journey…

***

In her essay collection Create Dangerously, Edwidge Danticat writes: “All artists, writers among them, have several stories — one might call them creation myths — that haunt and obsess them.”

***

Imposter syndrome has been sinking its claws deep into me this week. It’s nothing new. The feelings of unworthiness have walked with me for most of my life. If I look at the root of it, at where it comes from, I know it comes from my mother. Here’s the thing: a part of me feels guilt over this, over this writing I’ve done about my mother, over calling myself unmothered, over not being able to tell people that I have a great relationship with my mom, that she is my foundation and my church, that all things go back to the altar of la madre.

We texted a few days ago. It ended like it usually does: I am left reeling and questioning and wondering: if so many people love me, why can’t you? Why can’t you love me, mom? Why?

I am tired of feeling that. This shit is exhausting…and yet, here I am. Writing it. Again.

***

In her forecast for this week’s Venus retrograde, Chani Nicholas writes for Sagittarius:

Get to know what you are capable of. Don’t back down from it. Refuse to diminish it. Own it without arrogance, but with an unwavering acknowledgement of its magnificence.

Consider all that you have learned about your creative, erotic energy over the past 8 years. Which love affairs were your greatest teachers then? What did you learn from them? How have you healed? How do you approach this aspect of your life differently now? What were you learning about your creative energy then? What projects were your biggest teachers? How did you approach them then? How do you approach your creative work now?

The last two weeks of Venus’s retrograde ask you to sink deep below the surface of things. They get to the root of why you feel worthy and unworthy. Desirable and undesirable. Connected and disconnected. They scour the base of your energetic reservoirs, your creative wells, your oceans of imagination for clues as to what may have entered your streams of consciousness, telling you that you aren’t what you are. They ask you to heal the old wounds. Flush out the poisons from childhood. Cleanse the systems that were put in place by familial patterns so that you can better honor the gifts that you have received from the gods. ~ChaniNicholas.com

***

Over the past two days, I’ve found found myself searching for unmothered womyn like me. I’ve searched their names, their stories, their poems. I’ve been looking to feel less alone in the world. I need to see words like mine. Words that dare to speak our truths about our mothers. Words that chip away at the mother myth with a sledgehammer.

I reached out to folks on FB: Emily Dickinson’s poem Chrysallis inspired the title of my memoir. My sister friend Elisabet told me the other day that Dickinson was very much unmothered like us. I did not know this. There’s something about knowing I’m not alone in this that has gifted me much solace. All this is to say that I want to know more about Dickinson’s relationship with her mother. And if there’s any other unmothered woman writer that you think I should know and read, please do share. Yes this is me searching for roots. I am willing to be vulnerable and share that. There is no shame in our wounds.

In my research, I discovered that I am indeed not alone. There is nothing like learning that you are not alone in your ghosts and obsessions…

In a letter to her mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dickinson wrote: “Could you tell me what home is. I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” http://classiclit.about.com/cs/articles/a/aa_emily.htm

Virginia Woolf’s mother died when she was thirteen years old. She writes in her autobiographical fragments Moments of Being: “Until I was in [my] forties”—until she’d written To the Lighthouse—“the presence of my mother obsessed me. I could hear her voice, see her, imagine what she would do or say as I went about my day’s doings. She was one of the invisible presences who after all play so important a part in every life.”…

And once it was written, Woolf noticed, “I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer hear her voice; I do not see her.” Why? The question haunted Woolf. “Why, because I described her and my feeling for her in that book, should my vision of her and my feeling for her become so much dimmer and weaker? Perhaps one of these days I shall hit on the reason.” Source: The Day Virginia Woolf Brought Her Mom Back to Life

Woolf would later call her mother’s death “the greatest disaster that could happen.”

***

They call us unmothered. There are those who are unmothered because their mothers died. Then there are those like me, whose mothers are alive and still don’t mother us.

Merriam-Webster’s defined unmothered as: deprived of a mother: motherless <adolescent gosling that, unmothered, attached itself to him — Della Lutes>

Dictionary.com takes you straight to the various definitions of “mother” as if unmothered couldn’t possibly exist. As if nature would not allow that. God wouldn’t. The universe wouldn’t. And yet, I exist—an unmothered woman. ~excerpt from “They Call Her Saint”, A Dim Capacity for Wings, a memoir by Vanessa Mártir

***

I remember finding the term unmothered and how shocked I was by it. More than anything I was shocked by the realization that I wasn’t alone in my suffering and there were other people out there like me, who walked unanchored in this life. I wanted to read more work by and for us. I’ve searched high and low for it. I’ve reached out to mentors and friends for suggestions and recommendations. What has this made me realize? That I want to, have to, will one day compile an anthology of work by and for us unmothered women. An anthology of poetry and fiction and essays. I will create this for womyn like me to see that they’re not alone. That we see them. That there is refuge. There is something about seeing yourself in literature that is so profound and comforting. This is also true for the unmothered who have been living with the mother myth for so long, who have been told “solo hay una madre,” who have seen people gasp and clutch their pearls when they dare to speak of their mothers honestly, to show that she is not what the myth said, she wasn’t loving, she wasn’t kind, she broke you in so many ways… And here we are picking up the pieces. Let me show you how this shard glints in the moonlight. Let me hold up that mirror, sis. Let me show you what solidarity looks like…

***

In his essay “Finding Abigail” Chris Abani write: “Ghosts leave their vestigial traces all over your work. Once they have decided to haunt you, that is. These ectoplasmic moments litter your work for years. They are both the veil and the revelation, the thing that leads you to the cusp of the transformational.”

***

To be clear, there is no pride in me saying I am unmothered. This is a wound I walk with. I just decided that there is no shame in it either. This is my truth. This is me coming to terms with my existence. This is me seeing you. This is me telling you that for far too long we have carried this, telling ourselves that there must be something wrong with us because how could a mother not want to mother and be tender to her child? Mother is earth. Mother is the world. And to say that mother is wrong or incapable is to say that the world is wrong and incapable, and how could that be? It can’t…right? Wrong. There is nothing wrong with you now as there was nothing wrong with you then, when you saw your mother sneer at you, hatred pulling at the corners of her eyes. This was her pain. This was her trauma. That is not yours. You, I, we are worthy of love. We are lovable. It has been a journey to see that and own it. And some days I still struggle to see it and be it. But today you saw me. You said, yes. You said, me too. This healing ain’t easy but you must name your ghosts before you can tackle them. Mother is not the enemy. She just is what the world made her. What are you going to do with that unmothered wound? Me? Imma make art and I’m gonna love and Imma mother in resistance to how I was mothered. This is what I have and it is everything.

***

Kintsugi (“golden joinery”) or kintsukuroi (“golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. This repair method celebrates the artifact’s unique history by emphasizing the fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing the artifact with new life. Kintsugi art dates back to the late 15th century, making it more than 500 years old. It is related to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which calls for finding beauty in the flawed or imperfect. The repair method was also born from the Japanese feeling of mottainai, which expresses regret when something is wasted. Source: My Modern Met

***

I started therapy a year ago. My first words to him were: “I am an unmothered woman.” I am still in therapy, still digging into that wound. What I’ve come to is this: there are people who have mothered me in ways my mother couldn’t and still can’t. I am grateful for those surrogate mothers every single day. I had my Millie and I had my brother and so many others who reminded me that I am loved and lovable. They taught me that I can be different. That I can use these scars to make something beautiful out of this life I was given, that I have made. And, no, I didn’t do it alone. And, yes, I can stop the cycle. And there is also the bittersweet realization that I wouldn’t be who I am nor would I be able to do what I do, see you and be with you and be the mother and writer and teacher and student that I am, had I been mothered. See, it’s true in many ways que solo hay una madre, and that’s why I am still wounded by this truth of being unmothered. So the decision is: be broken by it or let it be my fuel. I didn’t know that I made the decision when I left at 13 and didn’t look back. I didn’t have the language then but shit, that girl somehow knew she had to save her own life. I’ve been doing it ever since. Even when I fucked up. Even when I repeated the “love me, please love me” cycle I learned from my mother. I was then and now still trying to save my own life. I was trying to see the glint of the moon in these shards. Today I want to say thank you to that 13 year old Vanessa. You are my hero, nena. You be the illest.

***

I have family on my FB friends list who don’t get why I write what I write or why I do the work I do. I see you. You’ve had a different experience with my mother or you don’t want to look at your own wounds or you’d rather I stay silent because you’re more interested in protecting the family name and keeping these secrets that don’t protect any us. I get it in many ways. I still won’t be silent. Don’t ask me to be. I’ve thought this through. I know I may hurt some people in my journey to heal and free myself of these ghosts. Yes, I think it’s worth all of it. Why? Because the cycle stops here. It has to. Silence already killed my brother. There can be no more casualties.

***

A little a while ago, as if to remind me again, a post came across my FB. The article starts: “How did Marcia Butler, the distinguished oboist, save herself from a detached, withholding mother and a sexually abusive father?… But Marcia was also hooked on trying to understand her mother. ‘I cobbled together weekly rituals through which I might pretend to be close to her and imaginatively pierce her thick veneer,’ she writes.”

So many of us are broken by our wounds. Some of us have somehow found a way to overcome and be fed by them. This is one story. I am writing mine.

[Woolf] was shocked by her [mother’s] death, but then again Woolf believed it was her “shock-receiving capacity” that “makes me a writer.” She thought the productive thing to do with a shock was to “make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.” The Day Virginia Woolf Brought Her Mom Back to Life

Relentless Files — Week 61 (#52essays2017 Week 8) *An essay a week in 2017* Today I saw a video of a whale caught in a fishing net.

#52essays2017 #Emily Dickinson #imposter syndrome #unmothered #Virginia Woolf #women writers #writing #writing our lives

0 notes