#university

It’s definitely encouraged, to the extent that if you don’t drink or drink very little, you are made to feel somewhat of an outsider or weird. It can affect things socially. I was a tad luckier because I commuted, so my excuse was that because my trains were so sporadic, I had to make sure I was a bit more “with it” to be able to get home! I don’t drink at all, but the reasoning behind the commuting seemed to make people understand more, as opposed to the disbelief and shock you get when you mention that you don’t drink!

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On one hand, I think it’s a great way to bond with others to have the “classic uni experience”, of clubbing, pub crawls, etc. You must make a lot of memories that way, and strengthen friendships pretty quickly. It’d just be nicer if the classic uni experience kind of extended beyond that though. I think it does with the arts - no one has time to go to clubs due to the workload, so everyone smokes, gets high and creates art instead, with the occasional drink at the pub, aha. With the academics though, it does seem to be more centred on clubbing and such :)

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Definitely not, haha! Little me had a lot of big ideas about what she wanted to be when she grew up, none of which were very realistic. Case in point, when I was six years old I was adamant that I'd become a pop star one day. Never mind the fact that I had no musical ability to speak of. I am pretty sure I wanted to be a princess and a dinosaur at one point, too.

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By the time I was in my mid to late teens though I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted from life. I knew that I wanted to be a writer. However, I lacked the confidence in myself to go out and actually pursue that goal so, for a long time, I settled on working in retail and hospitality. Because it felt like the "safe" option.

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Then the pandemic came along, and it put a lot of things into perspective for me. I realised that I didn't want to waste my life "settling" for the "safe" options. I decided that I wanted to at least give myself the chance to do something I truly loved...

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So, I decided to go back to university! And now I am studying for a degree in English literature and creative writing.

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[1/2]
You know what, let me tell you something about “smart”.
When I was in O Level everyone thought I was very smart. My teacher thought I am going to get a distinction in mathematics. Even my Islamiat teacher thought I’ll get a distinction in Islamiat.

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There was a question in our math book that my teacher couldn’t solve on board. He tried two times, got the wrong answer. Everyone in the class was equally lost either. He asked us to just leave it or see if we can find a problem in the question later.

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Next day I came to the class with the solved question and the correct answer. Everyone lost their shit. My teacher made me put that whole solution on a chart paper and displayed it at a soft board.
Everyone thought I was really smart. Some sort of a math whizz. Even I thought that.
It had happened before in 7th class, when my teacher asked us a trick question in class and I was the only one with the correct answer, and he said, wow, she’s smart. Very good at math.
It happened in A Level too once, when our teacher gave us a practice worksheet with a “golden section” that had the most unsolvable questions and I solved them, regardless.
It happened in my first semester when i got like 25 marks out of 30 in my python exam which was the batch highest, the second closest score being 17.

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Now you must also be thinking, what is the point here, is she trying to show off how smart she has been?
See, you also missed the point.
Smartness is a scam, an illusion.
I know because I have been there. In all of these things, it wasn’t my “natural genius” that helped me out. Something my classmates thought I had and must have felt bad for not having themselves.
It doesn’t exist.
I was able to solve that question in O Level because I was the only one who went home and couldn’t stop thinking about it and spent hours on it. No one else gave it a second thought. Not even my teacher. I’m sure if they did, they could have solved it. Even better than me, who knows.

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In 7th grade, I was the only one who actually took a second to mentally solve what I saw on board and compare before I spoke out my answer, unlike everyone else who was just making wild guesses.

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In A Level, everyone skipped over the golden section but I kept trying to solve it and didn’t move on till I could. They solved the entire worksheet of other questions when I was just done with the golden section.

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In my Python course, I had a personal liking of the teacher an I listened to the lectures very carefully. Unlike some of my classmates, I already had a laptop before starting university and had no problem installing and practicing on new applications like IDEs.

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And this is what it’s actually about. Who puts in the time. Who puts in the effort. Who has the ability to sit down and focus. Who has the privilege thats needed to perform all of these tasks.
It’s never about “smartness.”
Even for people who seemingly do not study at all and still get ahead, (cont.)

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Ahoj, moc si vážím takového zájmu! Svět potřebuje víc o oceány se zajímajících freaků.
Úplně první věc je samozřejmě Wikipedie a sekce souvisejících článků, haha. Wikipedie je králičí nora - někdy si prostě najdi nějaký jev, událost nebo fenomén, co tě někdy zaujal, počti si o něm, a pak klik na další související článek. Čas pak běží dost rychle a ano, pak se velice snadno dostaneš od hlubokomořského gigantismu k inteligenci hlavonožců a odtud k fucking problematice strašků v zajetí nebo tak něco. (Ta problematika je ta, že straškové maj podobnou rychlost úderu jako kulka ráže 22 a umí prostě rozmrdat sklo. Jsou to šikovní hoši.)
Mimo Wikipedie pak ale k mým oblíbeným výzkumným centrům a informačním zdrojům celkově:
Natural World Facts. NWF je projekt studenta mořské biologie, kde fakt krásně a přehledně vysvětluje nejrůznější záležitosti týkající se obzvlášť hlubokých moří. Když se do těchhle vod (haha) ponoříš víc, spoustu informací odsud pro tebe nebude nových, ale pro začátek je to ideální. https://www.naturalworldfacts.com/
Výzkum žraloků CSULB (California State University, Long Beach) - pokud tě zajímají žraloci, bože dobrý, profesor Christopher Lowe je tvůj člověk, miluju ho trochu jako muž muže. Mimo výzkum se hodně podílí i na popularizaci žraloků a jejich ochrany, pořádá TED Talks, rozhovory, všechno možný, má skvělý historky, objevy (zbožňuju třeba jím zjištěný fakt, že se kladivouni hrozně rádi sluní a opalují) a srdce ze zlata. https://www.csulb.edu/shark-lab
Projekty doktorky Ayany Elizabeth Johnson - pokud se nebojíš pořádný deprese ohledně oceánu plného plastů, tato žena za zdravé oceány bojuje jako lvice. Je drsná jak smirkový papír, vyjadřuje se extrémně srozumitelně ke všemu tomu shitu, co se děje a co s tím můžeme udělat my, pořádá přednášky, rozhovory, TED Talks. Zemřela bych za ni. https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com
Když se bavíme o ženách s koulema z oceli, jednu takovou má i orlandské akvárium - Keri O'Neil a Florida Coral Rescue Project, jehož je součástí. Orlandské akvárium má kurva velkou sbírku genetického materiálu korálů, úspěšně se jim daří je rozmnožovat (!) a já jsem obrovský fanoušek přístupu "hele, já vím, že polovina z vás ani neví, že koráli jsou živočichové, ale pokud se nám nepodaří Floridský korálový útes udržet naživu, ty vlny se o něj lámat přestanou a místo toho totálně rozmrdají naše slavný pobřeží". https://myfwc.com/research/habitat/coral/disease/rescue/
No a nakonec třeba můj oblíbenec - Monterey Bay Aquarium, to je to akvárium, ve kterým je fucking kelp forest! Jsou naprosto skvělí, udrželi nejdýl ze všech v zajetí naživu žraloka bílého, soustředí se na lokální oceánskou přírodu a její ochranu, mají oficiální účet na zasraným Tumblru a čas od času dropnou skvělé zajímavé fakty. https://montereybayaquarium.tumblr.com
Have fun!

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"The Turn" by Liel Leibovitz (part 1)

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For many years—most of my politically cognizant life, in fact—I felt secure in my politics. Truth and justice, I believed, leaned leftward. If you were some version of a decent human being, you cared about those less fortunate than you, which meant that you supported a whole host of measures designed to even the playing field a little. Sometimes, these measures had unintended consequences (see under: Stalin, Josef), but that wasn’t reason enough to despair of the long march to equality. Besides, there was hardly an alternative: On the other end of the political transom lurked despicable creeps, right-wing orcs who either cared for nothing but their own petty financial interests or, worse, pined for benighted isms that preached prejudice and hate. We were on the right side of history. We were the people. We were the ones giving peace a chance. And, no matter the present, we were always the future.

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This belief carried me through high school, and a brief stint in a socialist youth movement. It accelerated me in college, sending me anywhere from joint marches with Palestinians to a two-week hunger strike in Jerusalem trying (and failing) to lower tuition for underprivileged students. It pulled me to New York, to Columbia University, to more left-wing politics and activism and raging against Republicans whose agenda, especially in the 2000s, seemed like nothing more than greed and war.

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And it wasn’t just an ideology, some abstract set of convictions that were accessible only through cracking open dusty old books. It was the animating spirit of life itself: The dinner parties I attended on the Upper West Side required dismissive comments on President Bush just as much as they did a bit of wine to make the evening bright, and there was no faster or surer way to signal to a new acquaintance that you were a kindred spirit than praising the latest Times editorial. It wasn’t performative, exactly. At least, it felt real enough, the reverent rites of a good group of people protecting itself against the bad guys.

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I embraced my people, and my people embraced me. They gave me everything I had always imagined I wanted: a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university; a professorship at NYU, complete with a roomy office overlooking Washington Square Park; book deals; columns in smart little publications; invitations to the sort of soirees where you could find yourself seated next to Salman Rushdie or Susan Sontag or any number of the men and women you grew up reading and admiring. The list goes on. Life was good. I was grateful.

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And then came The Turn. If you’ve lived through it yourself, you know that The Turn doesn’t happen overnight, that it isn’t easily distilled into one dramatic breakdown moment, that it happens hazily and over time—first a twitch, then a few more, stretching into a gnawing discomfort and then, eventually, a sense of panic. (cont)

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An associates degree is valuable for several reasons:
1. Work - depending what you study (in my case electronic engineering) you can find employment upon graduation and then work full time and attend night school where your employer pays for your bachelors degree.
2. Location - often times 2 year colleges (community colleges) are located locally and are small so the student can live at home and save money on living expenses.
3. Less Stress - some high school graduates are not prepared for a large university experience because they are shy or introverts and would prefer to leave home later in life. This gives the student a few more years to mature and work while deciding on their career and life goals.

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In my daughters case, Florida has a college tuition program where you can save college tuition money each month at a fixed rate determined at the time you enroll into the tuition savings program. By the time your child graduates from high school they can attend any 2 year or 4 year state run Florida college or university with 100% tuition paid in full. In our daughters case she will attend SPC which is offers associate and bachelor degrees. Since she will live at home we can minimize college expenses and upon graduating from college she will have no college loan to pay. Also we will apply for several scholarships so books and miscellaneous expenses will be paid for.

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With proper planning and preparation you can, if you live in Florida, send your child to college and graduate without any college loans. The belief that many Americans have that you must take out a $200k college loan is not true, although many families mistakenly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars sending their children to universities only to have them return home indoctrinated in the Marxist ideology and rejecting Faith, Family, Freedom, God and Country.
NOT a good investment at all.

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Category "Questions and Answers"

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Рубрика "Вопросики и ответики"

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1. I saw on VKontakte such a site as Ask.ru, but it was simply not finalized, with all my might ... I quit, went to karaoke with a friend and we were hooked up with other girls, well, we started talking to them because they liked the way I sang Lady Gaga - Bad Romance, exchanged social networks and one had an askfm, she actively led it, it was interesting for me to read, the format was different, but later I joined)

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я увидела во Вконтакте такой сайт как Спрашивай.ру, но он просто не доработан, со всей силы... бросила, ходила в караоке с подругой и нас подсадили к другим девчонкам, ну и мы с ними начали общаться ибо им понравилось как я пела Леди Гагу- Бед Романс, обменялись соц.сетями и у одной был аскфм, она активно его вела, мне было интересно читать, формат был другой, но и позже я присоединилась)

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2. There was no paralysis, there was sleepwalking before school

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Паралича не было, был лунатизм до школы

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3. They didn’t get fired from work, but they were expelled from the university once, but I returned after 2 months, ahaha, it’s not in vain that I studied his mother for 5.5 years😁

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Hе увольняли с работы, а вот с универа 1 раз отчисляли, но я вернулась через 2 месяца, ахаха, не зря я 5,5 лет училась мать его😁

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