#also I’m literally almost done my university degree. i am fully an adult. these should not be issues ! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

iheartseo · 5 years

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MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: THIS IS ALL BASED ON MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND WHAT I FOUND HELPFUL !!! KTHNXS ✨

hello honey! I just finished my first year at my new uni doing my new degree and I am honestly so happy about the results I am currently getting compared to what I was getting last year. so I decided to write this little post in order to help those who are going into their first year of university/college or those who just wanna change their mindset.

just a very quick story time: last year was my first REAL year at a university and being fresh outta high school, I was extremely excited about studying the subjects I wanted to study and ready to make new friends etc. etc. However, I realised right after semester 1, that I was in way over my head and it most definitely did NOT help that my dumbass was in a horrible mindset and was not mentally mature for university and the social life of university. Due to this, as well as my quick declining interest and motivation to study, I pretty much bombed out and failed my entire first year of university. And when I said I failed my first year, I’m talking I completely failed and I knew I had failed by semester 2 and so I decided not to do my semester 2 final exams cause what’s the point?

that mindset honestly, was one of the worst I have ever been and my anxiety honestly has never been so high and I would not relive those moments ever again. so here are 10 tips and some advice on how to survive your first year of university/college and hopefully you guys will have a better 1st year experience than I did. ♡

TIP #1: GROW OUT OF YOUR HIGH SCHOOL MENTALITY (it will be an ongoing journey even past your first year of uni tbh)

not gonna lie, the second you tell someone that you are 18 years old and that you are in university, everyone suddenly expects you to be an adult and have your shit together and to have suddenly matured out of your high school mentality and that your break between your high school graduation and your first few months at university, you are expected to have mentally matured by like 20 years or some shit. yes, it is strongly advised that you get out of your high school mentality and yes it is strongly advised that you have to grow the fuck up once you get into university.

however, you should not force yourself to grow up. university will most definitely throw things your way that will completely change and shape the person you will just eventually grow to be.

TIP #2: ACTUALLY GO AND ATTEND YOUR UNIS/COLLEGES OPEN DAYS OR INFORMATION DAYS. JUST VISIT YOUR DAMN SCHOOLS.

my ACTUAL first year of uni, I was accepted into one of Australia’s top universities on a scholarship for a double degree course. So you can imagine the amount of pressure and hard work that was needed to be put in for me to even stay at this school. When I got accepted, it wasn’t like I didn’t know that it was going to be hard. But I personally never expected for it to be as hard as it was on me both academically and socially.

At first, I liked my course, but I am personally one of those people who thrive off of whatever environment that I am put into so if I am placed into a uni where the environment is highly toxic and almost everyone is a harsh competing rival, I won’t put in the effort. But if I am in an environment that is much more relaxed and opened, but is still willing to push me to work harder, I will actually try. But some people are able to work in incredibly harsh and competitive environments and are able to handle snobby people, I personally couldn’t at my first university which is why I transferred to the uni I am currently attending.

ABSOLUTELY NO HATE OR SHADE TO MY FIRST UNIVERSITY. IT IS TRULY A GREAT UNI. My sister went to my first uni and she absolutely loved it, but everyone has a different uni experience and sadly, I didn’t enjoy it. So I most definitely recommend researching about the schools you are thinking about attending and it would really benefit you if you personally went to visit the school yourself. If you can see yourself being happy there, if you can see yourself enjoying the environment, if you can genuinely say you like the school, go to that school. Because there is honestly no point on attending a university just for the name and the title and you don’t even like going the damn library that is on campus.

TIP #3: TRY AND STUDY SOMETHING YOU ACTUALLY LIKE

this tip is very hard and I honestly shouldn’t be saying it? But like hear me out. My belief is that if you are studying something you genuinely enjoy, you will actually study for it. Or at least that mentality definitely applies to me. I was studying a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts together last year. My majors were Psychology and Economics. AS MUCH AS I LOVED PSYCH, STUDYING ECONOMICS WAS A BITCH.

I personally fucken hated studying Economics and with that, I also had to study Maths as a subject under my science degree, which I also personally hated. No matter how much I tried and listened in my lectures, I could honestly never get the material and it was so disheartening to me that I couldn’t understand. Granted, I was dumb and didn’t check my classes (which I will discuss in my next tip), and I knew that university classes were going to be 100 times harder than the shit I got in high school, but that didn’t escape the fact that it was so disheartening that I wasn’t able to understand the material.

That lead me to slowly and simply not caring about what it was that I was studying and learning. I didn’t care anymore about my degree. I was so unhappy with what I was studying that I would spend more time going out and partying than actually trying to get even a Pass. Nothing wrong with having fun, but I prioritized partying over studying, which is not good.

Now I am doing an Education degree and I am so much happier! I genuinely like studying what I am studying. I even actively listen to my lectures online and take notes as if I was physically attending the lecture myself (and most students don’t even bother listening to online lectures). I even stay back after all of my classes are done to catch up with anything I have missed or get ahead of my classes. I seriously like what I am studying. Sure, I lose motivation from time to time, but I am studying way more now than I did a year ago.

BUT REMEMBER. IT IS OKAY NOT TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO STUDY. THERE ARE KIDS IN THEIR 4TH YEAR WHO STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT TO STUDY. Finding something that genuinely makes you happy and makes you want to work hard for it is hard to find, but it is so worth it once you do. So be smart with what you pick and choose.

TIP #4: CHECK UP AND RESEARCH ABOUT YOUR CLASSES

If you are lucky enough to pick and choose your individual classes, please for the love of god, research about them! look up your classes! read your damn unit guide! do not pick a class cause it sounds cool and fuck yourself over by not reading the prerequisites or not reading the amount of assignments related to that class.

I was dumb and did not read up on my classes nor did I research about them fully my first year. I honestly just read their mini blurb and went off my merry way which fucked me over so bad because I did not personally understand the actual contents of each one of my classes.

literally find your class unit guide or class information online, look into what assignments have been done in the past, what kind of weightings they each have and read the stuff that you are suppose to learn even if you just get a simple Pass in the class. the more you look into a class, the better understanding you will get of what that class actually provides.

also, majority of the time, you can see what textbooks are needed so you can grab them off before the semester even properly starts.

just as a little side tip

TIP #4.5: If you can literally pick and choose what your time table looks like, DO NOT FUCKEN GIVE YOURSELF 3-4 HOUR BREAKS BETWEEN YOUR CLASSES. You are lying to yourself when you say that you are going to be studying in those long ass breaks, like shut up. no. don’t do that to yourself.

TIP #5: DO NOT BUY YOUR TEXTBOOKS (if possible)

for the love of god, DO. NOT. BUY. YOUR. “MANDATORY”. TEXTBOOKS. it is a waste of money. you are blowing $200 minimum for a damn paper weight. I am not even kidding. I never have purchased a textbook and I never will unless that textbook is nowhere else to be found.

Be smart about your textbooks. If you are able to find a copy of your textbook in the library, BORROW THAT SHIT IMMEDIATELY. my university lets us borrow copies of books for like 16 weeks at a time and my semesters last for at least 13, so it is enough to class me throughout all of class. your universities should have multiple copies of whatever textbook that you need for class. even if the library copy is a few editions older, it does not matter, the content is still the same. It is not worth forking out $200-$500 for a couple of extra pages.

If you can’t borrow a copy from the library, try and find it online. There are some generous people out there who have uploaded a free full copy of the book somewhere. If you can’t find it online, borrow a friends copy and photocopy that shit like crazy. You might end up paying like $50 worth of paper but 50 is better than 200.

AND IF YOU SERIOUSLY CANT DO THAT, go onto slugbooks.com to get your textbooks. I personally haven’t used that website myself, but I hear it’s pretty fucken good to get textbooks.

TIP #6: JOIN A CLUB/SOCIETY/FRAT/SORORITY ETC.

for your first year of uni/college, just join something. there is deadset something for everyone. you do not need to join greek life if you personally do not want to. i didn’t join greek life cause australia doesn’t really have that kind of shit.

if you like debating, there is a debating club. if you like drama, 10000% there is a drama club. if you are a strong LGBTQ+ ally or are apart of that group and you wanna meet queer people, 1000000000000% there is a club for that. i’m not even kidding you, at my first university there was a damn memes society and a quidditch society. you will most definitely find something that will interest you.

if you aren’t a big fan of clubs, that is fine. i just would personally recommend joining one so you can make friends more easily and it’s sort of like a little bit away from your studies. it’s something fun for you to enjoy and you get to meet some incredible people along the way. I am apart of VSA (Vietnamese Student Association) and I have done SOOO many things all the way to modelling, charity events, partying and planning out major events etc. all whilst meeting some new people and creating friendships.

TIP #7: LEARN WHAT TO PRIORITISE

I feel like this should be a no brainer but it is important. It is okay to have fun whilst you are at uni but it is not good nor is it smart to throw away a perfectly good education that you are paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for.

if you have a party on Saturday and an essay due on Sunday, do not go to the party. I know that there is some people who pull all nighters to finish off an assignment or to study for an exam, I am extremely guilty of that. However, that does not mean I will sacrifice one extra day of studying for a party.

this is where you have to be an adult and understand how you, yourself study the best and how you retain information the best and if you need an extra couple of days, skip out on some parties and reschedule those lunch dates and dinner dates. your friends will understand and will not judge you for wanting to studying. if your friends do judge you for wanting an education, then you should drop them.

TIP #8: LEARN TO REFERENCE

I cannot stress how important referencing is in university. That shit is an absolute fucken bitch and it does not help that there are like 5 different styles or some shit. But it is important that you learn how to reference correctly because you will lose marks for not doing it correctly and some professors/tutors are just straight assholes and will deduct like 10 marks cause you aren’t using the correct referencing style for the class.

in my experience, for first year anyway, they will teach you how to reference in your tutorials so you get the general gist of what to do and how to do it. I learnt how to reference in APA format in high school, so I am fine, but I know not alot of people learn it that early and first hear about referencing once they get to uni. so learning to reference is a big thing. a lot of my tutors recommended me installing EndNote which does the referencing for you. I personally just let Word do it for me. If you go into your Word and find ‘Document Elements’ (for Mac), click on ‘Manage’ in the References section and a citations list will pop up. Click on the plus sign in the bottom left hand corner and just literally fill out the form and you are done.

OR IF YOU ARE A WINDOWS USER, just go to the ‘References’ tab and click ‘Insert Citation’ and then click ‘Add New Source’ then fill out the form. Then you are literally done. You basically have corrected did in-text citations within your essay along to whatever format is needed. *The only shitty thing about this method is that it will only automatically do in-text citations, not footnoting. Footnoting you will have to insert manually yourself*

After you finished with all of your citations, just click on ‘Bibliography’ and put in in as ‘Works Cited’ and literally your ENTIRE reference list will be organised into alphabetical order for you.

TIP #9: GET A CALENDAR OR DIARY

whether that shit is digital or physical, start using one. it is honestly so helpful to know when you have got assignments and exams coming up and you can kinda start planning out when is a good time to start researching or studying etc. etc.

it seems like such a small thing, but it works so well. I personally just use the iPhone calendars app and make sure it reminds me at least like a week or 2 ahead of the actual due date so I know that it’s coming up.

i also highly recommend that once you read your unit guide/class information sheet, that you write down ALL of your assignments, when they are due and how much do they weigh into your calendar/diary. because then you have no excuse to say that you never knew about it and yet you wrote it down. it also just helps you to be productive and work around/add in other dates like outings with friends into your schedule.

TIP #10: IT IS OKAY TO FAIL

I feel like there is such an extremely high expectation to pass every single one of your class with amazing grades and graduate with like a 4.0 GPA, like for some reason that is the standard that is expected out of every uni/college student, even those attending a really shitty uni is somehow expected to be blitzing through every single one your your classes, but the truth is, you will probably fail a class and that’s okay.

trust me when i say, it is okay to fail a class. i’m not saying that you SHOULD fail a class, but if you do, it’s not the end of the world. even though I failed so many classes last year, my first university was still willing to keep me enrolled and even offered some help. staying in university/college is sort of like baseball, very simple; 3 strikes and you’re out, but even then, they will still offer you services to help you study better or if you are struggling at home or you have your own mental issues that affect your studies, there are services at university/college that will help you and it’s for free.

i cannot stress how important it is to let your university/college know that if you suffer from any sort of mental illness, have a rough background, do not have the resources to study etc. etc., that you should let them know because they can help you.

that is all of the tips and advice that i can think off at the moment. i hope this helped at least one person. if i can think of anything else/more, i’ll be sure to update this post and add it on. or if i am brave enough, maybe just do a full blown youtube video? we will see on that. BUT UNTIL THEN. I HOPE THIS HELPS AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR FIRST YEAR AT UNI OR THE REST OF YOUR YEAR AT UNI IN GENERAL !!

#cindy talks too much #studyspo #study motivation #advice #university advice #college advice #hopefully this helps somebody out there #AGAIN THIS IS ALL JUST MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE #studyblr

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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ASM vol 5 #10/811 Thoughts

I suspect I’m gonna be a bit more down on the issue than everyone else!

Fundamentally the things that put my feelings into conflict with this story are how the past of the characters should be reconciled against the needs of the present.

What do I mean by this?

Well in this issue we have Peter being chill with Black Cat and also MJ claiming that for the longest time she couldn’t handle worrying about Peter and this would lead to a cycle of them breaking up and getting back together, and she also felt she was not on his level that she was dispensable and that maybe he should be with someone else. These pieces of dialogue are accompanied by images clearly evoking marriage era MJ which allegedly post-OMD still happened but they were not married.

If you go by recent history Peter should just not be this chill with Felicia. She is literally a burglar and he was willing to let her walk away which wasn’t his origin entirely about how doing that once killed his uncle? This isn’t even getting into her body count during her Queenpin tenure. I now they provide a sort of fix for that but my point was before that fix happened in the story he was clearly still chill with her and that is BS.

If you go by the wider history of Peter and MJ her statements do not really add up. Even in the 1990s MJ didn’t literally spend all her time worrying about Peter (she went out partying in Torment for example) and both back then and even before they married she clearly could handle his life, just not handle it in a wholly stressfree manner (because nobody could do that). The idea that this inability to handle his life, specifically the fact that she worried constantly about him, was the reason they’d break up before getting back together is also not true.

If you even include their break up under Marv Wolfman’s run MJ broke up with Peter the first time mostly due to her commitment issues. The second time they sort of broke up was in Spider-Man vs. Wolverine where there was a miscommunication problem but that was also due to her commitment issues a little bit. However it is obvious Spencer wasn’t referring to that stuff but the stuff during their marriage and during their marriage (I know they weren’t married now but you know what I mean, I’m just using ‘marriage’ as shorthand) they broke up just twice.

The first time was during Mackie/Byrne’s run and it wasn’t because MJ worried too much about Peter it was because she felt dispensible to him, that she didn’t really matter in his life, that he did not in truth need her and that he didn’t in effect love her much more than he would have loved a mistress or a trophy wife. The second time was in OMIT where they broke up over MJ feeling like being with Peter endangered her family too much. Granted that last one was indeed about not being able to handle his life but it wasn’t about concern for him or even herself as the issue implied. Moreover multiple times during the marriage, in fact very specifically during the issue they reunited under JMS it was made clear to MJ that she WAS indispensible and that Peter truly needed her. He said as much even in Spencer’s debut issue (if you discount the FCBD issue of course).

All of which means MJ’s statements don’t really ring true to her character or her shared history with Peter. She knows she doesn’t need to be a part of his world to matter. Now I say all that with the caveat that you can of course explain away the discrepancy to a degree. Perhaps in this one moment out of nervousness, or the chance to FINALLY unload her feelings, the sake of brevity and/or some combination of those things MJ is misremembering things.

There were periods where she found coping with Peter’s life very hard, and they did break up. And perhaps in seeing him with Black Cat and Mockingbird feelings of inadequacy crossed her mind and in this moment all those things are mingling together coalescing into her not truly accurate account of their relationship.* Equally her presenting their relationship as a constant merry go round of breaking up and making up could be her conflating the entirety of their relationship before and after their marriage, including all of Slott’s dumbass teases of them getting back together (and the Superior stuff too). Remember in-universe all the stuff she is talking about played out across several years and their break up depicted in OMIT was several years ago circa this issue (Superior alone played out across 1 year in-universe).

So there are totally ways of explaining this in-universe, even if there aren’t any for why Peter was so chill with Felicia.

However this is where we get into the ‘needs of the present’ as I discussed above.

Because it is plainly obvious to me that Spencer with this story was doing yet more clean up of BND and Slott’s mess more than trying to religiously fit everything into continuity.

Spencer has done much already to fix things but there is still much that is broken, so much like JMS I think we need to say its okay for him to bend certain bits of characterization in service of over all setting the ship back on course and cleaning up the mess he inherited.

As I said JMS did this too. To be incredibly harsh right now the fact that Peter and MJ were stayed broken up as long as they did under the JMS run really wasn’t in character for either of them.**

However his genius game plan was to course correct the series over all and do that by illuminating just WHY their relationship was so important and he did that by examining their feelings about NOT being together and making a story about them working to get back together.

It was a neccesarry direction to go in as it conveyed to readers on a meta level WHY them being together was a good thing and why it was in fact vitally important to the lead character and over all series.

Spencer in this story I think was doing something similar.

On a meta level he essentially connected Felicia losing her memory of who Spider-Man was, of what their relationship was like WITH her mischaracterization since OMD. Which works in-universe perfectly fine but along with Peter’s chill attitude to her it was set up for his big fix of her re-learning his secret and essentially going back to (starting to go back to) what she used to be like and what she always should have been like.

After all it NEVER made sense for Peter to have kept her in the dark at all so bending his characterization by ignoring her recent activities is equivalent to how he ignored the baggage from post-OMD to just immediately get Peter and MJ reunited.*** Although he again here provides a short yet solid explanation even for that just to address everyone who really was annoyed by Slott’s BS characterization being ignored.

With the MJ thing I think that storyline existed more for Spencer through MJ to essentially address readers’ (especially recent readers’) beliefs surrounding the character and her relationship with Spider-Man. It was essentially post-OMD MJ bringing up common arguments raised against her being with Spider-Man by editorial and characters within the comics (including her from Slott and other author’s stories) and then through the story debunking them. In this way using Black Cat, Spider-Man’s most famous super hero girlfriend (and sometimes romantic rival to MJ) as a representative of every potential argument in favour of Spider-Man not being with a civilian like her was simply genius.

It was Spencer writing on a level Slott never did, weaving these disparate plots together organically to deliver a statement on the characters, who are the reason we are reading this after all.

So that is where I am at with the story.

Trying to reconcile the technical mischaracetrization with that mischaracterization being in over all service of fixing the decades long mischaracterization and misconceptions of the characters.

I suspect with time I will be more okay with it and lean more towards the latter. I do hope though we don’t see more stuff like it though because I’d rather the marriage era be celebrated positively than negatively the way post-OMD portrayed it.

Other points I want to hit up.

- Ramos seemed better this issue than in the other ones

- There were some honestly hilarious scenes like the phone app and the reference to Spider-Man’s hyphen

- The lack of jealousy from MJ was a nice piece of maturity and subversion of expectations from her, especially given who she was dealing with. I also adored Peter just being up front with her and clear about what went down. You know...doing the resposnsible adult thing. That’s not even great to see in Spider-Man, it’s subverting an annoying as Hell trope in countless pieces of fiction to generate cheap drama.

- I almost feel Centipede guy is like Scarlet Spider because his costume colours were very reminiscent of Spidey’s but he also adorned a hoody

- There was a misplaced word balloon which is...c’mon guys try to catch those obvious mistakes...

- The cover hilarious and a great meta joke.

- Bandini’s art was still gorgeous

- I don’t know if all of MJ’s jobs and life prior to working for Stark (which still makes no sense) honestly could be regarded as the opposite of Spider-Man’s career strictly speaking. After all...they both earned money from posing for photos so...Maybe from her pov tha’ts just how she feels about her jobs, a little like how she felt in Unlimited vol 3 #2.

I’d give this an A- at worst, A at best.

Which is like...I know I brought up a lot of draw backs but look how far we’ve come in such a short space of time!

I was honestly jealous of everyone who read this before me! That’s where I am at with modern Spider-Man and it feels good!

*Also whilst Peter might’ve made his need for MJ explicit in issue #1 that might not have fully convinced her thereafter that maybe he’d be better off with another super person. After all he said what he said after almost dying so he might not have been thinking with a totally clear head.

However given how MJ, in two brilliant little scenes, takes Jarvis’ words of wisdom and also seems to absorb and grow past her insecurity rather quickly you could argue that said insecurity was less truly something weighing on her mind and more a wobble she was having at that moment. We all have little wobbles and moments of insecurity that do not necessarily speak to anything deepset within us.

**It made a little more sense when JMS retconned in the reason for why MJ left Peter but he didn’t reveal that for the first ¼ of his overall run so MJ appeared to be OOC for that time.

***Also once Spider-Man learns Felicia’s misdemeanours are partially his fault because they are connected to her loss of memory which he caused and perpetuated then it makes his willingness to forgive her and (presumably) trust she is on a path to redemption more believable.

p.s. Flash’s death being used as the explanation for MJ and Peter’s reconciliation is a microcosm of the issues I discussed with the story.

On the one hand Flash’s death is at last acknowledged. On the other it’s lack of acknowledgement before this and presumably after this story will continue to be eye brow raising because why be so unaffected by the death of your close old friend?

But at the same time diving into the realistic ark and depressing emotions of grief that should accompany Flash’s death would compromise the necessity of fixing the broken Spider-Man series so once again, we got to ‘bend the rules’ as it were.

#Spider-Man #Amazing Spider-Man #rNick Spencer #michele bandini #Humberto Ramos #Black Cat #Felicia Hardy #The Black Cat #Peter Parker #j. michael straczynski #mjwatsonedit #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #mj watson #Dan Slott #nick spencer

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4626songs · 6 years

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Everyone deserves a great love story. This one is mine.

So. Here’s the thing.

Is it even appropriate for a 38-year-old guy to obsess over a major studio teenage rom-com flick? People my age who saw it usually say they wish they had something like that when they were that age – like, 20 years ago? I probably should behave like a proper adult, too: just love the movie and wish I had it back then when I was seventeen.

The problem is that after watching the movie and reading the original book, I feel seventeen once again. In all the right and wrong ways.

The case in point: Love, Simon.

I mean, yes. I’m done keeping my story straight.

When it comes to the emotional intellect – i.e., empathy and ability to recognize others’ as well as my own emotions – I am a certified piece of dumb and voiceless deadwood. I mean, I even officially have it in my DNA. But it also did not help that I grew up with emotionally detached parents and had very few friends during childhood. I’ve been struggling with the lack of emotional intellect all my life.

But when I hit adolescence and started to feel something big, it was the worst. I could not recognize and understand what the fuck was going on. And definitely I could not talk about it with anyone. Not even because I was scared. Simply because I literally did not have the words to describe it.

Eventually, it was music, movies and, ahem, slash fanfics that helped me find those right words that explained me to me. That big thing was me being helplessly and hopelessly in love with my best friend.

Curiously, I did not have any struggles with my sexuality or identity after this revelation. I sort of accepted me being gay as a matter of fact and moved on.

Telling anyone – and especially my best friend – about this was a completely different matter. Obviously, I was scared. As Simon says in the movie, announcing who you are to the world is pretty terrifying. But it was not just this fear. Once again, I did not have the words to tell my story. My go to sources of emotional cognition – music, movies and books – were failing me. You know, there was not a lot of coming-out, coming-of-age films or songs or books quarter of a century ago. Except maybe for Smalltown Boy. The most beautiful song. But do you remember the video? One more reason to be terrified and NOT come out.

So, I was silent. It also did not help that I knew for sure from our conversations that if I told my friend about me being gay and my feelings for him, pretty much everything good in my life would end.

I was correct. After suffering for several long years feeling increasingly cold inside from not being able to speak up and express what I feel, I finally managed to confess to him somehow. And yes, it went almost as bad as I expected. I was told that I was a misguided fool, and that I should never speak up about it again. Never speak up.

See. My first coming out experience was pretty bad. But not something objectively bad. I was not beaten up or bullied or outed, thank god. That was out of question, I knew him too well for that. But still. Somehow I was left even more dead and frozen on the inside than I was before. Not something to look for in the future.

But eventually, things got better. I found new funny and geeky hobbies, through which I met great new friends-for-life. I got three university degrees, including a PhD, and became a scientist. I started a music blog, and eventually freelanced as a music journalist. Finally being able to talk about what music meant for me was a liberation.

On a personal front, things were also moving somewhere somehow. There were other unrequited loves. Deeply engaging epistolary relationships with anonymous penpals. (Hi, Blue!) Casual sex. Proper offline boyfriends, and even serious long-term relationships. Some drama along the way, of course. But, until recently, no great love stories coming along with that. Somehow, deep inside, I ached for a great love story to happen in my life.

And then there were those other coming outs. Nothing objectively bad. Always insanely awkward. When I told my mother, she said that I had an irrevocable right to ruin my life and do whatever I want, and we hadn’t talked about me being gay for the next twelve years. A roommate did not believe I was gay at first, and then, when I insisted that I was not joking, he cussed and stopped talking to me for two weeks. A girl who had a crush on me laughed with relief that there’s something wrong with me and not her as I didn’t return her feelings. But there were other friends, who accepted me unconditionally, sometimes even without fully understanding what I was talking about and what it meant for me. I am so grateful to them. But in the end, it was not enough for me to shake that feeling of permanent awkwardness and fear of being me. I chose to remain in the closet for the rest of the world.

But you know what’s (not really) funny? That the same happened with all other important things in my life. It’s like I was permanently living in a giant ball of awkwardness. I had to keep mostly silent about my geeky hobbies at my wonderful science job, even though these hobbies were the main source of my creativity and inspiration. In turn, my wonderful geek friends could not care less about my music tastes. My music friends kind of respected me as a science guy, but I could never talk with them about actual science. And beneath all of that was this big-ass gay secret. It’s like I was living at least four parallel lives, but never a complete one.

I guess once you decide to remain in the closet about one thing, you cannot fully be yourself about other stuff. I became so used to self-editing. Self-censorship. Strategic omissions. And, worst of all, being mute about most important things with most important people.

There are all those reasons why you should continue doing so. It’s dangerous to come out in my home country. It could harm me. It could cause collateral damage to my colleagues, students, professional networks, projects I worked on. It could hurt my family.

But the truth is, people can get no less hurt when you choose to be mute. I know I hurt people by not speaking up about something important to them and choosing silence instead. But there is even a bigger danger. Once you start to pile up silences, little white lies, and strategic omissions, they may grow up to the size of a mountain, and one day simply crumble under their own weight. There will be a lot of pain and harm involved. And I wonder: what if there was no mountain from the very beginning?

Still, the worst is what you are doing to yourself. When you cannot make yourself talk about things that are important to you, you either become a pressure cooker and explode one day – or they slowly die within you, freezing you in the process. And these may be too precious things to lose.

I have thought that eventually, I became better at talking. I have a group of wonderful friends with whom, I thought, I could be more or less myself in every sense, including gay stuff. But somehow, even after all these years, I still cannot do it all, even with them. I cannot even reply to a Facebook challenge about 10 favorite albums, because, like, at least 3 of them would be too gay. I cannot make myself talk about my favorite movies that made an impact on me, because, again: gay. I mumble something unintelligible about my career goals in science, because, in truth, what I mostly care about is how to solve not a grand scientific challenge, but a classic academic “two-body problem” further complicated by a gay twist.

Then one day I saw Love, Simon. That same night, I immediately bought Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda, devoured it in two sleepless nights, and re-read it twice since then. I went to see the movie, like, another seven times. And have listened to the wonderful soundtrack and the score, like, a hundred times already, and don’t plan on stopping any time soon. I simply cannot get enough of this movie and of the Simonverse. And all the time I’ve been trying to sort out why did it hit me so hard and sweet? Why have I suddenly turned into an obsessed teenage fanboy?

Then I realized, I am just so fucking sick and tired of not speaking. I simply cannot stand it anymore. I need to speak. I have to speak. I must speak. Somehow, Simon and his story made it so obvious. Why I was so stupid not realizing it before?

But there’s another twist to that. Everyone deserves a great love story.

I’ve never seen a movie in my life to which I could relate so strongly. Yes, I was that “just like you” kid back then. Living a normal life without any really big problems. Obsessed with music and friendships. Awkward and unable to speak about important things. Alone.

(Oh god. Do you even realize how lonely Simon should have felt if his favorite song is Waltz #2??)

Unfortunately, my great first love story never happened. Instead, I shut myself up for decades to come. But somehow, Love, Simon movie and incredible writing by Becky Albertalli put me right there, back into my seventeen year old me, and finally showed how that first love story could have happened differently, retroactively replacing those long-buried feelings of sadness and despair with joy about the things to come.

And, boy, they did come. Who knew that you can finally get your own very personal great love story when you are at 34, almost ready to give up on happiness? It was wild, it was unpredictable, it was fateful, it was insane, it was unbearably romantic. It was – and, four years later, still is – love.

This story also physically moved me across oceans and continents to, out of all places, the city of Atlanta, Georgia. So, imagine this extra little level of relatability in Love, Simon / Simon vs. (That damn Radiohead, April 2 concert that I did not get to! That gay bar scene!) And now I’m dying to tell my story. Because that’s the most important and amazing thing that happened in my life. Because it is about hope. Because it is about breaking through. Because it is about believing that you deserve everything you want. Because love is a game we deserve to play out loud.

The problem is that I still haven’t quite figured out how to tell my story. Old habits die hard. But I will try. As I said, I cannot stay silent anymore. I need to come out. And I’ll start here.

#love simon #simon vs #svthsa #coming out #coming of age #lgbt

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