#maybe i want to be a cs major maybe i want to be a psych major maybe i want to say fuck it and go art major or english major

[grendelsmilf]

well now i have to do this. If all the owl house kids were applying to human college. which witch goes where

i know vee goes to yale fr. not only is she clearly smart enough to get in (with a good scholarship), but she would wanna stay in CT to be close to her mom :’) she probably majors in like. latin or smth

i don’t see the benefits of luz getting a formal education in the human realm i mean she clearly does not vibe with the education system. i think she’d do some sort of independent study with eda and write a thesis on glyph magic. if she absolutely had to get a degree in the human realm she’d probably go somewhere small that accommodates different learning styles and creative approaches. she probably majors in something literary and/or artistic. (and then writes her thesis on glyph magic.)

gus could go anywhere he wants of course, and i do think he would really enjoy going to a human college for obvious reasons, but i see him living in california. maybe UCLA? he’d be obsessed with hollywood, from like an anthropological perspective. he majors in media studies/film. i would say history or anthropology, but i don’t want him becoming utterly disillusioned with our world, so media studies is a good way to inspire him through art and show him the best humanity has to offer without depressing him. also i think he’d minor in CS. idk why but i see gus being really good at coding.

willow would go to vassar. i say this because she really reminds me of my friend, who went to vassar. that is my only justification, but it feels right. she majors in botany (not sure if that’s actually a major, but if she does bio, plants are definitely her focus) and smth like psych or sociology.

hunter would also go to vassar. not because willow goes there, but because it’s a school for sensitive nerds who cry in the shower. i think he’d focus on animal biology so that he can one day become a vet (like camila).

if amity still hated herself and had a stick up her ass like in s1 i could definitely see her at uchicago, but since she’s way more chill now she’d probably go brown: “the happy ivy.” maybe she’d even take some art classes at risd and draw anime girls kissing for a grade. she majors in engineering because she is her father’s daughter through and through. (and maybe she also minors in philosophy or smth bc she still does enjoy making life harder for herself, it’s a compulsion!)

#cavehags #ask #the owl house #o.tv #aw this was fun #these kids are so cute

[skypancake]

fall 22 + why i started this blog

it’s a bittersweet time as the semester comes to an end, the profs i didn’t like i’m happy i don’t have to do any more work for them, but on the other hand the ones i do like i don’t get to be in their class anymore ;-; or i suppose i could take their class again, but it doesn’t really make sense to, you know? one of my profs is retiring, and preferred we write good things about her on rmp lol

next semester should be interesting, 15 units, i’m taking physics, psych, history, and comp sci. i wasn’t able to get them all online like i’d wanted to, so i’ll have to expend some gas, but maybe i’ll actually see some friends more often now that i’m on campus. should i get a board? i don’t know how much sense it makes considering i’m not on campus all day, i’d probably wanna get new shoes too, then, considering i feel i should know at least some tricks, and i don’t wanna tear my canvas shoes as is

i think my parents think that by pursuing a cs major i’ve an innate interest in the subject, which isn’t necessarily true. i mean, i don’t hate it, but i don’t have a passion for this craft, either. my actual goal career-wise is to own a/multiple successful business(es), and i’m told comp sci is a useful skill across many disciplines, while you’ll learn more by actually doing business than looking at it from an outside perspective, possibly the instructor being a dinosaur who doesn’t know a thing about what they’re teaching. but yeah, my mum pulled me over and showed me the microsoft teams and other shit she was doing, i think she and my dad are trying to set up my mind into the idea that i’ll be working for someone else my entire life, a pitfall i’m doing my best not to fall into. if money’s tight i’ll give in to the traditional system, but my time is mine. i own it, and i’d rather not sell it to somebody else

i made a topic change for my final essay in english 10 days before the semester’s ending, but seeing as i got more research done in 3 hours compared to less in 4 with my other topic it should hopefully be that much better, i guess this topic just speaks to me more. one of the other ideas was based on bo burnham’s “welcome to the internet” delving into how the internet has changed people, but that might be too broad/specific a topic considering i couldn’t find anything about that specifically (like comparing the 80s-90s to now), though i might’ve also just been using the wrong keywords. another i just thought of was how negative the american news is, don lemon looks like he’s dying, and all these awful stories combined with the negativity bias and availability heuristic can make taint the image of the world in someone’s eyes, this is an idea stolen from jarvis johnson, i don’t remember which video. unrelated, but he also mentions at some point while giving advice to somebody (about relationships?), to not be burdened with the present or past if things went south, because something way better could be right around the corner. i also couldn’t find which video this was

another one of my profs is the whole reason i started this blog, she had a survey at he end of every week asking how we were doing and the like, which i absolutely poured my heart into with thoughts and stories, and her compliment of they being engaging and such inspired me to possibly put these things out there for more people to see. whether they do or don’t is fine, i write these things in a google doc for myself anyway

i am wondering how to publish things like poetry or short stories though, is tumblr the right platform to do that? i would assume the platform itself matters somewhat, idk 

#college

[otaku553]

Idk if someone asked this yet, but what major are you taking in college?

HEHEHEHE YES THANKS FOR ASKING NO ONE HAS ASKED YET

It’s a bit long winded but my major (at least my intended major, I don’t actually declare until next term) is Computation and Neural Systems! Kind of long explanation, so scroll past if you aren’t really interested in me rambling about this lmao

I kind of ended up in this major only because I wanted to be a psych or cogsci major and they had neither of those majors here. CNS is a relatively new major here so it’s kind of difficult to explain, but it’s like a cross between psychology, computer science, and biology focused on neuroscience. Cool thing about it is that what students do with it is varied! I want to focus on psychology and neurobiology, but since a lot of the required classes for CNS overlap with CS, I’m also going for a CS minor on the way. Some people focus on CS and use what they come to understand about the brain and how we think to apply to AI and stuff (I don’t know much about this unfortunately, I’m not very deep in CS) and some people use the neurobiology to go into very specific research.

I feel like it needs to be said that a lot of students are railroaded into hard STEM majors like biology or CS if they’re good at it because that’s the way my area was at least— at least 90% and probably more of my friends ended up going for a hard science or otherwise STEM major in college despite some not really finding a passion in it. I’m really lucky that I found a major that combined the parts I liked about STEM into a single focused field that I could apply to psychology as I wanted, but really, I questioned for a long time whether I was suited to the fields I wanted to go into. I felt disingenuous when I said that I liked what we did in school and wanted to do it in the future— it was always less that I liked it and more that I was good at it, and inevitably when it went into harder territory I would lose interest in it and be miserable because I’d boxed myself into a STEM major since it was what everyone around me was doing, what my parents expected of me having been stronger in STEM than humanities for all of my life. To people in high school who feel like you’re stuck in a hard science kind of STEM field, try to branch out a little! See if you like some of the softer sciences like sociology or psychology.

For me, psychology was kind of a blessing. If I hadn’t known psychology was an option for a future career I wouldn’t be here and so motivated to do stuff right now. It took a summer research internship to figure it out, but you can actually go extremely in depth into very weirdly specific things in psychology that maybe you haven’t considered before. I’m trying to focus my research experiences and courses on learning about visual perception and learning because I want to know how people see art, how they appreciate and consume it, and how artists learn to draw. If I can’t do an art major, I thought I’d at least pursue art the closest way I can in pure science. I’m really happy where I am!

[killian-whump]

KW's OUAT Dream

This dream contains no cast members, and especially no Dream Colins. There is, however, a cameo from Dream Kenan Thompson. I’m not really sure if this dream is of any interest to anyone other than me, but I feel like it highlights a few key parts of my subconscious psyche very well, so...

Anyway, hop the jump here to read it...

The dream began with me and several other people LARPing a Once Upon a Time camping trip. I was our group’s Emma Swan. Apparently, this was part of some multi-fandom LARP event or something, as there were other campsites nearby with other LARPers.

One of the staff members of the event came up to our group and informed us that, “A gentleman calling himself Jesus has requested an audience with Emma Swan.” I was kinda intrigued by this, as the guy obviously had some big roleplay plot in mind here, and I was eager to help him out with it. I sent the staff member back to ask some preliminary questions before I answered this “summons” - namely, what time frame of Emma did he want? Young Emma? Jail Emma? Bailbonds Woman Emma? Pre-CS Emma? CS Emma? Post-Series Emma? Seemed important to be in character as the right Emma when I went.

The staff member returned and informed me, “Jesus doesn’t care which Emma you are; he just wants you dead.” Rude. “And I’m not sure he’s actually a LARPer here, either.” Extremely rude. “He might be an alien, and we might be under attack.” Intergalactically rude.

At this point, as if on cue, the PEWPEWPEW sounds of aliens taking over the world started sounding in the distance, and everyone in my LARP group (and all of the others) started panicking. We all took off running for a nearby barn structure, because for some reason we all “knew” that the aliens couldn’t figure out how doors worked, so as long as we were inside, we would be fine.

Our LARP group’s Killian picked me up and ran off with me towards the barn, which I thought was awfully nice of him, since I am literally the world’s slowest runner. At some point, I realized I was carrying a baby. “Where the hell did this come from?” I asked Killian, as if it was surely his fault. “It’s Hope!” he said. “Pfft. Like we need a baby right now.” I chucked the baby over Killian’s shoulder, as if it was a bomb I was hurling at the aliens chasing us.

We made it inside the barn and shut the doors. Or tried to. Killian kept fucking up the sequence, and I kept yelling at him to stop being a doofus, and then the aliens were coming in. DAMMIT, KILLIAN. So we took off again, and Killian was carrying me again. I told him to head for the backdoor of the barn, because we had to get out of there and the aliens were swarming the front door.

He refused to go. The fucking dingus just would not go. “Fine, put me down, I’ll go myself.” “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.” And then I realized he was working with the aliens, so I kicked him in the junk as hard as I could so he’d let me go, and I took off running. I was pretty pissed, because that Killian had been pretty cute, and now I’d need to find another one to LARP with.

At this point, I was running with our LARP group’s Ruby and Elsa. We got cornered by some aliens, who informed Ruby that they had Shane and would only let him go if I sacrificed myself to the aliens. “Oh no!” Ruby cried. “Not Shane! Please! Let me sacrifice myself for him!” “No,” the aliens said. “We only want Emma Swan.” And everyone looked at me expectantly. “Who the FUCK is Shane?” I asked. Ruby leaned over all conspiratorially and was like, “OOC: Remember, this Ruby has a special relationship with a-” At this point, I cut her off entirely and stated, “I don’t do OCs.” “No, but he’s-” “I don’t do OCs. Shane doesn’t exist to me, and Emma Swan isn’t going to sacrifice her own well-being for someone who doesn’t exist.” Elsa helpfully reminded us all, “Guys, I don’t think we’re LARPing anymore. I think this is actually an alien invasion and they actually are holding Shane’s player hostage.” I was not moved. "Well, he shouldn’t have come to a LARP convention with a fucking OC.”

Of course, by this time, we were surrounded by aliens and got captured. They put us on their spacecraft and flew us to their home planet. And we were still LARPing? Hardcore, man. We somehow had acquired a new Killian on the alien planet, whilst in captivity, but he was a super ugly dude who was balding and didn’t even know who Killian was. Apparently, LARPers on alien planets can’t be choosers.

Then a ship landed from Earth, a rescue squad from our home planet, intent on bringing us all home. It landed on our new Killian, and absolutely no one cared. As a show of sympathy, Kenan Thompson (who was apparently part of the rescue team?) put on a Don King wig and announced himself our new Killian. It seemed like a major improvement, and he looked good in leather, so we all agreed to it.

Then, as we were filing onto the rescue ship, a few aliens cornered me. “Please don’t go,” they said. “We want you to stay with us and be our Emma Swan. We just want to LARP some CS scenes.” They were kinda cute, so I figured I’d hear them out. “Okay,” I said. “Who would be my Killian if I stayed?” “You could have your pick from these gentlemen,” the aliens told me, showing me five dudes who were each hotter than the one before - and all hotter than my original LARP Killian. “Oh. Wow. Well. I guess I can stick around for awhile,” I said. “Maybe we can try a Reverse Harem AU...?”

And that’s about when I woke up. I feel like this dream is a very powerful learning tool, in that it teaches us some very important things:

Aliens don’t know how doors work

KW runs really, really slowly

KW doesn’t care about babies at all

KW might even use babies as weapons in a pinch

KW doesn’t do OCs

If you roleplay as an OC, KW will abandon your ass

Kenan Thompson wears Don King wigs in his off time

He’s also willing to LARP as Killian Jones on occasion

If the aliens are hot enough, KW will relocate into space

#personal #kw has dreams #not whxmp

[happypledis]

Get to know me tag

Tagged by @nuest-yakjaro! Wow for once I’m actually doing a tagged thing QUICKLY :O

                                                    1. How tall are you?

legit 1 cm away from 5′7 (I’m 169 cm) though my mom is 5′7 (170 cm) and my dad is 6′1-6′2 (idk exactly? so 180 something cm). I always thought I’d be like 5′9 or taller lol 

2. What color and style is your hair? Light brown! And it’s long and wavy! 2b/c ish on the curl charts??

3. What color are your eyes?

brown-green! they appear only brown to most people but up close they’re actually green. I love brown eyes though so it’s all good!

4. Do you wear glasses? yes, but only for homework/driving etc. I have an astigmatism, aka one amazingly perfect eye that does all the work for the other super bad one. so I wear glasses to help balance it out. I have horrible nighttime depth perception though so :O

5. Do you wear braces? I did for SO MANY years that I would sue if my teeth didn’t come out straight

6. What’s your fashion sense? I have a mix of sporty (like athleisure in a way??), casual, and cute. Weirdly my casual style is like 90′s grunge without the distressing or all the black. Think maybe 90′s grunge shirts/pants/shoes/ etc but in a sunshiney happy way? And also without the black & white striped long sleeves underneath or any grandpa sweaters. Tbh I would wear long sleeves and sweaters 24/7 if I could though I don’t actually match the grunge style for those two. My cute style is like huge sweaters especially pastel with a little k-fashion inspiration?? okay I’m gonna stop lol

7. Full name? I just go by Elle for privacy reasons~

8. Where were you born?

A very diverse suburb in Texas! I love Texas and this area I live in

9. What kind of student are you? Very dedicated. I’m good at school. I love learning and I don’t mind studying. I was not super good at math but other subjects I’ve always done well in. I’m very proud of my grades but who knows what will happen because my uni classes are a bit harder this fall.

10. Do you like school? Yes, as I said I love learning! I was homeschooled and that made learning fun. I didn’t have to learn to the test or worry about drama on the daily. Being homeschooled made it hard to get better at math though as my mom stunkkk even worse than me and my engineer dad would make me cry so a patient teacher I wasn’t related to would have been good there

11. Favorite subject

Basically anything without numbers! I love English (not essays though but I’m gonna major in English so RIP lol) and history most! Science was good when numbers weren’t involved.

12. Favorite TV Shows Hm I don’t really watch TV currently, usually only youtube channels and dramas. But I loved super hero shows like X-Men Evolution, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Young Justice, etc. I also always liked detective stuff like Psych and this one cool show called Sue Thomas FB Eye. 

13. Favorite Movies

The Narnia movies, anything in the MCU but especially Cap’s movies, Black Panther, & the new spider man. also Tangled & Moana! I like happy stuff mainly. Entertainment for me is for fun so I don’t want super sad or violent stuff in my life >:(

14. Favorite Books This is so hard. Scumble, The Chronicles of Narnia (like @nuest-yakjaro I love CS Lewis too), some super unpopular old medieval-fantasy Christian books given to me by a family friend that really influenced me as a person lol, and the Princess Academy Series. Also anything by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

15. Favorite Past-time Writing, language learning, hanging w/ friends online or off

16. Do you have any regrets? Yes. I regret letting insecurity run my life for way too long. And letting fear stop me from speaking up for myself in friendships/relationships. Life is too short.

17. Dream Job Some sort of job where I can be in the publishing field and maybe travel to Korea & China for the job. (Not for kpop/kboo reasons, I loved the cultures before I liked kpop.) But overall a job where I can help people, and use things I’m good at--English/writing, and other foreign languages, with a slightly flexible schedule.

18. Would you ever get married? If I ever found someone I loved enough to, yes. But I truly love being single, it fits me very well and I don’t have a strong desire for romance in my life 

19. Would you like to have kids? I’ve thought about fostering/adopting older kids or teenagers. I love kids, and little kids, but I don’t see how I could raise young ones alone if I do stay single.

20. Do you like shopping? Depends on the item but nowadays yes!

21. Scariest Nightmare You’ve Had

Mostly kidnapping-centric ones as a kid. I don’t get nightmares so much anymore but I do get them about relationships sometimes which are scary in their own way. Like having people I really care for secretly hating me, for example.

22. Any enemies? none that have ever announced themselves

23. Any significant others?  um. not anymore. i did about a week ago until I had to break it off though

 24. Do you believe in miracles?

very much so. I’m religious and have seen them in my life and in others’.

25. How are you? haha. good besides what happened in #23 I’ll be honest XD

I’ll tag

@pledisanti @nuest-turtle @8eht 

@nuest-beast , @aronquacks / @lazyhani (whichever one you are online to see this @ from lol) 

#tagged #get to know me #not pledis

[genericappblrurl]

Hey, I'm super interested in majoring in neuroscience/cognitive science in college (maybe w/ a comp sci minor or somehow incorporate machine learning/ai stuff, sometimes part of cognitive science programs at colleges) and am considering applying to Stanford. From my (kinda limited) research, there is the symsys major and psych major w/ a neuro/cogn. track as the 2 options that are closest to what I want to study. Which one would you suggest, or are there any better options?

Symsys!! Either the neuro or cogsci track, probably, but there are a ton of other options as well. The course offerings are more varied and imo more interesting, you necessarily gain exposure to CS topics (and often in direct relation to the brain stuff), and the interdisciplinary nature of it lends itself to some really cutting edge research. Also, all the cool kids do symsys B)

I switched out of the psych program because it felt redundant, and I switched out of the neurobio program because it was more rote memorization than learning how to think about the brain. Symsys was awesome. There’s some statistic out there about how very few people work in their field of study after graduating; symsys makes you want to stick with it. Also you get this cool mug:

If you do end up attending Stanford, feel free to message me off anon if you’ve got any questions about the program!

#symbolic systems #symsys #majors #college applications #collegeblr #appblr #stanford q #I LOVE SYMSYS

[qvincvnx]

what would the gangsey all study in college

this question is too hard for drunk alf but here’s my best shot based on what people study where i Live. which is providence. not that anyone in this series would go to brown but let’s assume for the sake of this post. gansey: medieval studies and/or history - he wanted to do an IC but his advisor was like “just do some independent study and a thesis about your special interest”. maybe dual concentrating into lit arts. works/spends a lot of time in the rare books library. adam: engine probably? maybe cs or something but he doesn’t really have the cs vibe. with a “minor” in public policy or some other humanities field. long-sufferingly takes at least one medieval latin class with gansey. TAs. blue: started in environmental studies and realized it was ALL policy shit and no science, and moves into probably geobio bc she’s into the actual earth sciences shit. works at campus dining and probably does a couple other part-time things. henry: a fucking psych major for SURE. i have more specific headcanons but they won’t mean anything to anyone but me BUT i DID once describe henry to someone with a meme off the college page about the culture of international student housing. so. noah: seventh year senior !!! actually idk how jwu works and if they have that lmao. but he goes to jwu for chef school!!!ronan: if he HAS to START college AT ALL, he’s a risd dropout

[realtalk-tj]

adding on to the ap bio vs second history elective question; i'd like to become a cs major

also in response to “im deciding between ap bio and a history elective now. i don't know what to choose so what would be your take on the criteria for choosing one or the other?”

Response from Al:

       I would only take AP Bio if you’re into Bio, maybe you’re into combining the likes of both CS and Bio. , or you have another good reason you want to challenge yourself in Bio besides adding it to your AP count (trust me it really does not matter how many APs you take more than choosing the APs you want to take and choosing them wisely). 

       The same applies for your history elective. It might be a good way to get that 4th history credit out of the way and be able to delve into the classes you’re passionate about taking in your future years at TJ. Good luck! 

Response from Flitwick: 

I agree with the above, but I’d like to modify the last statement a bit -- from the perspective of someone who likes history/social studies there’s serious merit to taking the history electives that interest you (and we have a decent number of good ones that aren’t like anthro or psych). Again it depends on what you like - I liked law and philosophy so that’s what I’m taking, but if you like “current” history take 1989, etc. 

#AP Biology #cs

[hagiographically]

Could you talk more about Stanford stereotypes regarding literally anything (idk majors?) bc they way how you explain them is literally so funny/good

lmao aw ily, you can always come to me if u want my opinion related to anything stanford (stereotypes about dorms, sports teams, greek life, a cappella ??) because i have A Lot Of It - i only wish i was more integrated with the school cuz most of my opinions are hearsay instead of personal experience

major stereotypes….hmm thats hard cuz there are So Many majors but i can just go with the most common ones and group some together, etc

engineering:

aero/astro - small department full of space nerds, most of them are in SSI, drones, i personally consider them very brainy and if i were better at engineering i would be aero/astro cuz i think it’s the next frontier. there should definitely be more women in it for sure

bioe - my ex was bioe, they’re a bunch of nerds but they have good enough hearts. they care about curing diseases and shit

CS - oh boy. ohhhhhh boy. here we fuckin go. honestly CS is barely even a sterotype at stanford cuz its such a dominant culture…..the people who decide what stereotypes even are, are probably CS. it’s gotten to the point where if i meet someone and they aren’t CS it’s worth noting. it’s gotten to the point where, in my psych/literature/communications/education classes, i expect the other people to be CS. i have so many Opinions on CS Boys because CS Boys are such!!!!a!!!type!!!! (and different from just, a boy who does CS). they worship the trinity of google, facebook, and microsoft. their junior summer internship is at least one of these. they buy into all silicon valley startup culture and they love elon musk and talk about venture capital when its really not welcome. they love talking about how much work they have and how little they sleep. all INTJs. probably virgos. there is also a subgenre of CS boy who didnt come into stanford wanting to do CS and ended up switching because its easier to be a CS Boy at stanford. they criticize the culture all the time. to this you can say, “it’s all right, craig, i know you just want to make money.”

CME - people major in this when they dont love themselves

design - i personally think this major is fuckin cool and considered it before i realized physics was a pre-req. the d school is thought to be d for douchey though because their whole shtick is so ~ideate~ ~prototype~ ~We Are Quirky and Put Post-Its On Walls~ but i dug it as a frosh. they can be kinda condescending, but theyre by far the most interdisciplinary dept in the engineering major (although its also full of white men who think theyre hot shit cuz they can use photoshop)

EE - again for people who lack self love, its supposed to be so fuckin hard

MS&E - white frat boys who glorify jordan belfort

ME - similar to design. live at the PRL. stay up till ungodly hours carving wood. somehow this is enjoyable. also white male heavy

who knows how the f to categorize this:

education - if i could do stanford over i would major in this. usually very diverse, woke, often come from underprivileged backgrounds so they want to make it better for other people and reach communities that arent currently benefited (unlike silicon valley or wall street :) ) i respect them because they do what they love and not to make $ although if educational engineering were a thing im certain people would jump ship. it’s also not in the humanities dept so i feel like theyre Above the stanford hegemony and i love that

earthsys - i considered a minor in this. usually sweet, earth-friendly people. white but woke. possibly queer. granola loving hippies and maybe some frathletes who want an “easy” major but not sure (im not shitting on easy majors. i have one. love ‘em)

generally i like girls in any of the engineering depts because they are dealing with sexism and doing it. the boys are oftentimes extremely self-congratulatory and will usually say something dumb about the humanities. even the girls will hit you with the “oh i wish i could study that!” about any non-engineering discipline, and it’s implied that what they’re really saying is “but i care about my future too much!” 

humanities/sciences:

AAAS/chicanx studies/asian-american studies/CSRE - woke poc who use lots of buzzwords and say things like folx

art - the people who major in art are usually more quiet than you’d think. we have an Artsy Type at stanf that are kind of extra (theta chi/EBF types, also very woke QPOC) but i dont think theyre art majors for the most part. i barely know any actual art Majors. lots of engineers just do art on the side

bio - i love bio majors because they are sciency but also get shit on by engineers so we’re in solidarity. they are sweet and study all the time and just wanna make the world a better place. there’s also the pre-med kind of bio who i would hate if i were also pre med but since im not i just kind of admire and fear them

chem - i like chem people much more than i thought i would. again a very small major and they just live in lab and have varied non chem interests. this year i accidentally became friends with like 6 people from the chem fraternity and i was surprised how much i liked them

complit/english - i was this major! english in creative writing are usually chill, interesting people. complit and english in literature…….it’s a shakespeare circlejerk and they hit you with the Discourse. overly educated white people. avoid the boys specifically but the girls can also be incredibly self-satisfied. maybe 50/50. but if you take a creative writing class instead of a lit class, the CW kids are usually awesome

taps - our drama department. they’re nice, but extra and intimidating. (also stanford theater is…..okay….not really as good as they seem to think it is yikes that was mean but) however, like with english, take an introductory class and you’ll meet very cool non-taps majors.

econ - oftentimes wonderful people! outside of class that is

femgen - same people as the AAAS/CSRE crowd except whiter. queer girls with undercuts. upperclassmen are intimidating to many. everyone shares their opinion even when its not warranted. my honors is in this

film studies - this was almost my minor and if i werent CW i might have doubled in film and comm! i dont know any film majors but if they arent a cole sprouse im sure theyre fine (they are probably a cole sprouse)

german/italian/french/spanish language or studies - spot the person who studied abroad!

history - like english, can be cool, more likely pretentious

humbio - the other premeds! actually humbio gets shit on alllll the time for being easy or having a fluff major, bio majors think they’re soft. thus, i like them. their course catalog is awesome and its a huge major but all the scary pre meds are straight up bio and humbios are softer but in a good way its a lot of sweet girls

intl relations - one of my favorite majors. usually very down to earth, the best of the IR/poli-sci/pub-po trinity. however, they can also be self-congratulatory for being So Woke and also they love to educate you when You Didn’t Ask

linguistics - weird, diverse people. very small major. similar to anthro, my old major. i love small majors they always have cute dinners together

MCS - a hard fuckin major. not as “Look How Smart I Am” as a bad CS. mostly quiet and stay in and study their ass off

math - love to wax poetic about the beauty of math. fun when drunk. not when sober

philosophy/MTL/classics - avoid. classics can be okay if it overlaps with archaeology because theyre just a bunch of nerds and they get really excited and its cute. phil majors would rather just educate you about how free will is fake and youre like tim can you please just get out of the way we’re in the dining hall and you’re blocking the cornbread

physics - Avoid. they think all other sciences are lesser. women and POC are ok

poli-sci - hit or miss. generally pretty friendly. very talkative. fun to talk to about Not Politics

psych - the best major hehe. generally liberal and woke and often queer. however, non-psych people in psych classes can be a nightmare (unlike english, taps, etc) and problematic as fuck. also sometimes psych majors are extra (exhibit a: me)

pub policy - probably in student government. im biased against it, but go in with hesitation. student government is by and large not as effective as they seem to think (however, a “woke” person in pub po might be cool because they will campaign for sexual assault awareness and economic diversity and good stuff)

STS - ohhhhh man. probably the major that gets most shit on at stanford. i think engineers think it’s fake. (humbio, design, and STS get shit on the most i’d say, because they are interdisciplinary STEM majors, so engineers think that they’re for people who arent smart enough to do hard majors. whereas with english or IR, engineers know they couldnt do it because they havent written an essay since 2009, so they offer grudging respect) a frathlete major. i personally like it because i dig interdisciplinary shit, but i don’t dig frat boys or athletes so i avoid. some of their courses are great but it does seem kind of scrapped together as a major and i dont know how people outside of stan see it

sociology - a small major, seems cool. stigmatized but not by stanford because stanford students dont know it exists. “dont you mean psychology?” no

urban studies - skaters? who knows. i respect them tho. i think they care about….like….architecture? and city development? its a very niche thing and i feel like it’s pretty hip n happening

#stanford #stanford university #majors #college #advice #stereotypes #stan

[katherine-rambles]

i had a post earlier about me being excited for PSU orientation and...

orientation was so disappointing that i couldn’t stand to look at the post afterwards and impulsively deleted it. 

like i was expecting that it’d be more than one full year of credits, since i had that left at uo anyway, but i thought i’d be able to get stuff done in two years or a little more, leisurely-like.  no. there’s a non-zero chance i will have to go through nearly the entire frosh-to-senior main cs pipeline at psu??? that’s such bullshit??? 

i’m also going to have to take basic science lab courses, which i specifically avoided at UO because uocs let me (psych! woo!) and I HATE LABS. literally the reason i did not become any other kind of scientist, having to be in a lab and deal with “tests” and ‘results’. ffhhechghjkg. not to MENTION their stupid mandatory program that is making me take MORE electives that i’m intrigued in but the equivalents were filled in at uo like, soph year. 

and i don’t want to be in college for another fucking three to four years!!! i’m not sure if my financial situation will allow me to do much else but part time, and like. hnnn.  i really want to finish my degree-- and i could definitely learn some useful skills from those classes, it seems like a rigorous CS program-- but... 

i’m so tired...

also if the demographics of the transfer are going to be anything to go by then this cs is going to be full of dudes. :/ not that... i wasn’t expecting that... but it seemed much worse than uo’s percentage. more overall diversity in terms of age/ethnicities but in cs at least a much starker gender divide. 

and i don’t even know anyone even remotely in the same boat as me. all my friends either didn’t go to college or are graduated -- and of those that i know transferred, i think one did community for prereqs and psu for specialized, and the other went to another college for different math classes. oh and i guess i don’t know where another one is at, but i think they ended up changing majors so while their situation with credits is understandably frustrating it is not quite the same frustration as HAVING THE SAME MAJOR’S CREDITS NOT FUCKING APPLY

i’m tired and i still haven’t been able to find anyone to help with the maybe adhd thing and i.... gfhgn. nnn. i also have work at 8 and i am not very tired. sigh

#text #present #sad #future

[irarelypostanything]

The Well - The 2016 Regents Scholars Conference was my favorite thing

Most people don’t know what “regents scholar” means--in fact, I know people who got accepted into the program and didn’t even realize it.  When you apply to a lot of colleges, you’re automatically considered for it.  If you get it, you get a letter telling you that you got it.  Lots of people I knew in high school just checked online to see if they were accepted, and didn’t bother to take the extra step of checking if they got into honors, or the regents scholarship program, or both.

Not that it matters.  They probably would have made the same decision regardless.

How do you get it?  No one really knows.  We know for sure that it varies from school to school, but the process is as mysterious as whatever they use to accept people into Cal Poly SLO.  Is it GPA?  SAT score?  A mixture of that, extracurriculars, and whether your last name starts with a vowel or a consonant?  My theory is all of the above.

*****

Calvin drove us out of Davis around 4PM, on a Friday.  I met two first-years named Austin and Raven, and Austin utterly destroyed me at a game of chess we played on his phone.  Incidentally, Austin just so happened to randomly ask one of his professors about chess.  The professor was so amused by this random encounter that when I played him at chess two days earlier, he talked about a student who approached him and asked about his response to the Sicilian Defence.

“I don’t know, I don’t really play e4.”

We had dinner at a place called Steve’s Bar-B-Que.  I had dinner with Calvin, Baotuan, and a second-year I actually just so happened to know from a community service event called “Challah For Hunger,” unrelated to this.  The next morning, as this was a two-night event (courtesy of a Berkeley host named Aditya), we went through activities consisting of a scavenger hunt, a lecture by a Berkeley psych professor who served as a consultant for Inside Out, and a few workshops by various colleges.

Workshop topics ranged.  One person from another college, whom I think had hosted a TEDx event, made one about TEDx.  Another one, who was a wilderness expert, made one about surviving in the wilderness.  Davis made one about how to get more swipes in Tinder.

I spent all of dinner talking to someone named Anna.  She was a first-year from UC Santa Cruz.  Biochem major, considering a minor in CS.  Knew basic programming.  Originally from San Diego, felt behind in coding knowledge, wanted to get into bioinformatics, was taking a math class at community college in the summer.  Had smoked before but not often; didnt party much; was a member of the school’s Chinese Club.  Yeah.  Bits and pieces.

What, was this my run through a dinner, a behavioral interview, or some insane cross between a behavioral and a security clearance interview?  I find it weird that I got this set of information.

Anna didn’t go to the party.  I don’t know how, but Berkeley managed to house a Regents Scholar house party with a huge space, music, and two full-time bartenders (for all I know, the bartenders were just friends from class 1A...but they were dressed up, knew how to make everything, and had what looked like a professional setup).  Did I say Regents Scholar house party?  Maybe they’re the ones who hosted it, but the party definitely got bigger than that.

I sat on a couch somewhere where it was a little less noisy and asked the wilderness expert why you wouldn’t just stay in the car.

*****

Of all the things I could really remember and take away from that weekend, it was Rubio.  He was a grad student giving a speech.

He asked us to raise our hand if we ever felt like we weren’t good enough.  Every single hand went up.  He told us that we were the smartest people at some of the smartest schools, and still...even we constantly felt like we weren’t good enough.

Which seems a little arrogant, it not really arrogant, but it meant a lot at the time.  And he started to talk about the things that he did.  He gave a really, really moving speech and I just wish I could recall the details of what it is he actually talked about.

*****

I shared the story at work.

“So what you’re telling me is that you wasted my taxpayer money so that you could listen to a workshop on how to get more swipes on Tinder?”

#25-minute freewrite #personal

[topicprinter]

So right now I'm part of a startup incubator where I was recruited by the founder to be on her team. We are college students as well. She likes that I am studious and she liked my resume (Hackathons, research assistant, various jobs, and a winter data analyst internship). We're a small team of four members and we're a diverse group. Now, regarding our times in college as undergrads, this is a breakdown:My founder is a senior. She's about to leave college soon. She's an economics major with a 2.7 gpa (she's horrible at math) and the most experience she has is in real estate and babysitting. In high school she was the top of her class though, and participated in every club she could, including being the VP of track club. She's also a huge reader. She's a huge thinker, too.I am a sophomore who's aiming for a field in CS. I will do anything if it means I can be experienced in my field. I don't do it for the money, but because I think it's an absolutely wonderful place. I'm only carrying multiple duties for the team for the experience (because it's good for a tech person to understand the business/customers imo). My founder says I'm the right hand man because she interacts with me the most about the startup and trusts my research and communication abilities.The other two, the other marketing person (sister to the founder) and biochem guy (her boyfriend, who is a junior himself), are fine. They do the work, but perhaps not to the level that I anticipated at first... but they still do it. And they're very kind and wise, too.I was invited to be the 'tech officer' of the startup. Soon, my founder kind of bounces between roles, and now I'm the 'marketing lead' of the team. As the tech officer or marketing lead, I was given the task of data organization and web development, along with research and interviewing people online and on the streets, which I was psyched for because I get to learn new skills. Yay me!With time, my roles still shift around, and she tells me I can start working on gathering features for the website. Yay, now we're getting somewhere!Now, I don't know why she gets this idea, especially after a few weeks into the program, but she soon tells me, "I don't think you should work on the website..." Pause. What? I ask her why, and she doesn't really respond, but she has been talking to her cousin's father who is a web developer himself. In the past I asked her numerous times if I can get in touch with him so he could mentor me. Hasn't happened. Not even an email. Fine, I'll leave it alone for a while and do my own self studying to research (on top of difficult but enjoyable STEM classes). Maybe I can prove to her that my passion for learning will drive the business.Now, can I just say something. I'm not very confident in the idea of this startup to begin with. We have so, so, so many competitors, all of who's single flaw is one thing... not being advertised well enough. However they have a lot of credibility and their teams have plenty of expertise. We discovered this AFTER the startup began, which my founder started thinking of THREE YEARS AGO.There's too much to really say, but deep in my heart, I don't think my founder has it in her to actually do a good job with this. She's very responsible and passionate, and even won another incubator's competition, but she yet to consider her positioning in the market and what makes us stand out. This is not a tech startup either... it's in the field of skincare/pharmaceuticals. She has a difficult time balancing organizational skills, and when I watch her get stressed out over things that are quite solvable, I start to relinquish a little bit of confidence.One other awful thing is that whatever I tell her, she dismisses it until she realizes that I'm right. Every single thing I've mentioned, she says meh, until someone else mentions it or until she realizes the consequences of not following it sooner. For instance, we had a pitch recently that we were given weeks in advanced to work on. Three weeks before the pitch, I tell her we have to start preparing for it. Two weeks before, I tell her we have to start. I create a Google slides.. I'm told we shouldn't worry about it and should worry about our 'customer insights' and 'research' instead. Okay, sure. That second week, I see groups practicing. Whatever. One week before the pitch, I tell her. Nothing. Two days before the pitch, we all scramble to start doing it, but she's still not worried.Day of the pitch. It goes terribly. One of our members was reading off index cards so obviously and I was jammering my entire way through. We get a 2.4/5. She says that isn't too bad. Wtf? It was TERRIBLE. We didn't even get our business model right. No one understands what we're trying to do. Great.Today, I talked to my founder's sister. She tells me the other day they were talking with the wed developer in their family. He says the father laughed it off and said, "Why didn't you get someone overseas to work on the website?"Can I just say something? I don't know a SINGLE damn time I said I couldn't work on the website. I don't recognize a single damn time I showed incompetence over it either. I don't know why they are feeling doubts. They aren't communicating to me effectively. No one is ever on the same page of anything! There are certain things I don't know yet (I never worked on an eCommerce website before) and I told her that if she needs one, she should keep a real developer at bay at least, but I always tell her I'm striven to learn about tech. It's the only thing I care about. As long as I put work into it, I can try to get us where we should, and I'll do it for free b/c I know developers are expensive.Another thing, I think we're too focused on the solution than the problem. I mention certain things over and over, and so do other people (mentors, team members...), but she doesn't understand what we're saying with her heart!We also do home assignments last minute too. Huge turn off. I mention assignments a few days before the due date (because sometimes I don't have time) and no one responds (via text sadly) until the last day. My founder's sister doesn't come to the same college so it's difficult to meet up and discuss to-dos as well...I just feel like we're ridiculously amateurish. I don't necessarily want to quit and I do want to see this towards the end, but I also want to practice tech projects as often as possible so I can get better at my field. I also want to be listened to. I have a few startup ideas of my own, so that's why learning is important for me. I really don't know what to do. In a way I feel like a terrible co-founder for having so much doubts. Maybe it's because I'm going to get my monthly (oops). I express this with our mentors and they tell me to talk to her more, but when I display my sentiments, all she says is, "I know," but does she really...?I might write a TLDR later. Sorry. I'm just so tired after this. I'm so tired of being incompetent and I just want to be successful and listened to for a change. This might just be burnout. We do have the most points out of all the other teams in our track (it's a competition type thing) but I'm not really feeling it. I also have ADHD btw so maybe it's because I don't stick to projects long term normally that my body's trying to pull away.Oops. This was very long.

#/r/startups #reddit

[igsy-blog]

BBC 100 books (with commentary)

thanks for the tag @thegreatorangedragon  As an English major I was compelled to read a lot of these, and I may only have skimmed/read chunks of some of them if I could get away with it....

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen: not my favorite Austen, actually (Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility are 1 & 2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - OMG, SO many times. My siblings and I had rituals around the reading of LOTR.

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.  Yes - it’s OK Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Yes!  My kids grew up to them and the experience was almost as good as the books.  But I also really enjoyed watching Rowling mature as a writer over the course of the series.  I don’t ask for perfection from my writers, but warmth and growth.  :-)  Also, they got my stubborn non-reader sons to READ. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee  - like probably every other person who went to MS/HS in the US. The Bible - yes, and twice all the way through.  once at about 10, and then more recently along with Slate’s Blogging the Bible (ok it was just the Old Testament).  That was a stage on my journey to my current fallen-catholicness 
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - yes, but prefer the Pat Benatar song :D Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - yes and really need a re-read 
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - No, keep meaning to. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
.  Yes, and can I say I love Dickens - LOVE Dickens - but I hate this book.  I think it’s always assigned because it’s shortish.  I regularly reread the glorious messes that are Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and my fav, the insane Our Mutual Friend (but ONLY the Lizzie Hexam/Eugene Wrayburn segments). Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - and the sequels.  I think Jo’s Boys might actually be my favorite. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
.  yes - I am pretty sure??? Catch 22 - Joseph Heller.  read enough of it to count Complete Works of Shakespeare - William Shakespeare; yes! my mom was a Zefferelli Romeo & Juliet junkie - we had the album of the film - and I must have heard it 3 dozen times before I was 7.  She bought a complete works and I read all of it over the years. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier. No 
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes.  My husband’s favorite book.  And I really liked the Rankin-Bass film, when I was young.  Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk  No Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - yeah The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger  Realllly?  This is a good book but I’m not sure it belongs on this list.  First novel and feels fresh out of an MFA program.  My other complaints I won’t say here because I tend to get very snarky about this book. (Another book I read around the same time [mid-oughts] was Then We Came to the End, the debut novel of Joshua Ferris - much better, like DeLillo without the air of self-importance.) Middlemarch - George Eliot; love me some Eliot (but prefer Silas Marner, mainly because of a very good tv adaption). Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Again: really?  I read this book because I spent the summer between HS and college in a really small town with a teeny library and I basically read my way through the fiction stacks.  Won’t say more than that, because I would get political. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Yes, but not a favorite. Bleak House - Charles Dickens. A great, great book for which two amazing miniseries have been done in my lifetime.  But rightly criticized, IMO, for the annoying tone of its first-person narrator, Esther.  Dickens was dazzlingly, spectacularly wrong in writing about women.  Not to mention other groups.  But my god did he skewer institutions on behalf of the (British) poor - none better. This book wins for the Jo’s death scene and its sweeping, bitter, critique of church and state and society and everything - and so human.  “Dead!  And dying thus around us, everyday.”  I was 12 when I first read that, recovering from chicken pox, and I sat straight up in bed.  This is the book that made me a socialist. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy This is so horrible, but I haven’t! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams.  Yes, fun, but not a favorite. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - No.  I started to and have a copy at work, for some reason I don’t even remember.  But not enough to county Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky  No :( Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck.  Yes, oh and my grandma’s family were Okies.  Everyone in my family has a copy of the Sacramento Bee front page story sneering about the dust bowl immigrants arriving in town and my great-grandmother is mentioned by name (though they mistakenly think she is her widowed father’s wife).  I love Cali, and Sactown, but we have a long history of being not-so-welcoming to everyone at certain times (was it in the 80s where the “Welcome to California, Now Go Home” bumper stickers were everywhere?).

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - yes The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - yes but so long ago I don’t remember it at all Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy yes. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens.  Yes, not his best by far.  Another “easy” read like Great Expectations Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - and many other of his works, when I was trying NOT to be an atheist - Mere Christianity, his sci-fi trilogy and Til We Have Faces, a retelling of my favorite myth, Psyche and Cupid.  I like the more obscure books in this series best - The Silver Chair and The Horse and his Boy. Emma - Jane Austen Persuasion - Jane Austen - oh, here it is!


The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis .... uh, yes The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - was a group read at work a couple of years ago.  recommend. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - yes Animal Farm - George Orwell - another book I want to re-read. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - nope 
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; YES A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ... did I?  I’m pretty sure. Or was it The Moonstone? Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery.  YES.  Anxiously awaiting the new adaption.  Why is it so hard to get Anne of Windy Poplars on kindle?  That is the funniest one.  And Rilla of Ingleside so heartbreaking 
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood, yes and ever so long ago.  Another book to re-read soon (haven’t started watching the series yet) Lord of the Flies - William Golding Atonement - Ian McEwan; LOVE this book and his writing in general.  He also wrote the screenplay, and the movie and the book are a perfect match in tone. 
Life of Pi - Yann Martel No, but on my list Dune - Frank Herbert - no Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - yes, Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - yay! 
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - my intro to Dickens, though not his best Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - starting to get depressed at all this dystopian fiction that needs to be re-read as a primer for the present times 
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - lives at my desk at work.  Not even a favorite book of mine, but I love diving into his words every once in a while Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov The Secret History - Donna Tartt The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold  - when I saw the movie it reminded me why I wasn’t into reading the book Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - plot better than the story 
On The Road - Jack Kerouac Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - yeah, I had to read so much Hardy Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - no, want to though 
Moby Dick - Herman Melville; I can’t even think about this book without remembering our class discussion of the “circle jerk” chapter.  I remember literally nothing else. 
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - meh Dracula - Bram Stoker 
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett  - an ALL-TIME favorite Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson Ulysses - James Joyce; all hail the master, and the bastard responsible for my sick dependence on the em-dash The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Germinal - Emile Zola Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - unfortunately, yes Possession - AS Byatt A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens; of course Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell The Color Purple - Alice Walker - excellent The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry Charlotte’s Web - EB White: yes The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes.  I prefer Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter series hands-down, but despite her association with Tolkien, Lewis, et al, she got squashed between Conan Doyle and Christie.  Her Gaudy Night is one of my top five books.

The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - yeah The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery heck, yeah The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks Watership Down - Richard Adams yes A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - my kids read this book in HS, so I have a copy lying around, but have never read it A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas Hamlet - William Shakespeare - yes, probably too many times.  What are my favorite Shakespeare dramas?  Maybe King Lear, Richard III? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl. yes 
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo