Faunjo - Nikki

#I love two gay dads and their son

I AM HAUNTED BY A PAST I CANNOT GO BACK TO !!!!!! anyways

As someone who spends a *lot* of time online, especially with the current half-online schooling system my school uses, I thought it would be helpful to share some apps, websites and extensions that make my learning experience a lot easier! I’ve seen a lot of master posts like this by other studyblrs, but I often get overwhelmed by the many options they recommend for each function; so I thought I’d share the ones that I find work the best for me :)

desktop apps

Spotify - for music & podcasts

Drawboard PDF - helpful for annotating and reading PDFs!

Grammarly - great for correcting English grammar!

Virtual Cottage - very cute lil productivity tracker; plays lofi & rain sounds, kind of like forest but cuter! Has a full-screen option.

Discord - ok this isn’t a study app, but given that we’re at home a lot of clubs at my school use servers on Discord to organize & hold meetings!

websites

sleep calculator - helps you figure out when you should go to bed

CBC Gem - has a ton of free Shakespeare performances in full HD

duolingo - free language-learning website! 

conjugemos - Literal life-saver for learning Spanish grammar

wordreference - Great language dictionary/conjugation resource

unsplash - free HD pictures

free harvard courses - what it says on the tin!

chrome extensions

coffeelings - basically a “pixel a day” bujo page that you don’t have to draw out by hand!

smallPDF - file conversion & compression

Forest - productivity

Reading List - helps you bookmark webpages & articles to read later

LanguageTool - grammar and language correction in multiple languages

Grammarly - grammar and language correction

MyBib - citation generator

PrintWhatYouLike - print the content of a webpage w/o ads

SleepMode - set your webpage to close at a certain time

Outliner -  simplified, clean outlines & annotation features

WHA New Tab - clean new tab page with clock/quotes

a disclaimer for the following post: i wrote this at a time when i was incredibly insecure. i felt incompetent in many areas of my life, and you can see that reflected in the books i chose to include in my list. although i did not lie (i really did enjoy all of the books on the list), these are not books that i think everyone should read. most of them did not change my life; they were good literature, and nothing more. i have grown up a little bit since making the list, and i recognize now how immature it was to make this list of books everyone “should” read, in an attempt to sound educated and feel intelligent. i’m not going to delete the list, because it does have some really good books on it, but life is too short to read books out of a sense of obligation. so either read these because you want to, or read something else instead :)

20 books everyone needs to read at least once because people will reference them in front of you your entire life:

“the faerie queene,” by edmund spenser. this poem is both an epic and an allegory, written in (mostly) iambic pentameter. it is divided up into six books (plus a little bit of a seventh) which you should read, if for no other reason than the fact that there’s supposedly an exclusive book club at harvard university for the select few people who have finished all six sections

“romeo and juliet,” and “othello,” both by shakespeare. these plays both involve two lovers who die because of communication issues. and they’re both super important to read because there are so many references to them, both in other pieces of classic lit., and in modern culture

“the picture of dorian gray,” by oscar wilde. if you can’t tell, this is my favorite book ever. if you can get past the purple prose, it’s one of the most ‘dark academia’ books ever. it’s got references to other famous pieces of literature (which i’ll include on the list), lots of gay shit, a dramatic young adult who loves shakespeare, and ofc, murder

“the brothers karamazov,” by fyodor dostoevsky. actually started reading this one to impress a boy; i think that perhaps he and i have different concepts of what is considered impressive, but the book has turned out amazing, so i’m happy. it has lots of wonderful philosophical and theological discussions. the one thing you may not like is that Dostoevsky constantly goes off on little tangents (like Herodotus). it simultaneously fascinates me and makes me want to smack him with a stick

“the prince,” by niccolo machiavelli. this isn’t classic literature so much as it is political science, but honestly, so many people talk about ‘machiavellianism’ without ever having read the original Machiavellian treatise, and it would be so much better to just read the book and then be able to cite machiavelli himself at your next political-philosophy discussion.

“the canterbury tales,” by geoffrey chaucer. these are classics. they’re filled to the brim with medieval language and sexual innuendo, but that’s part of what makes them so wonderful. if that’s not enough of a selling point, ‘the tale of the deathly hallows’ from “harry potter” is super similar to ‘the pardoner’s tale’ from this book.

“the divine comedy,” by dante alighieri. includes a crap ton of great history references and some super sick burns directed towards the corrupt people of dante’s time.

“meditations,” by marcus aurelius. the original metaphysical journal. probably the epitome of ‘light academia’ if i’ve ever read one

“the great gatsby,” by f. scott fitzgerald. jay gatsby is low-key super relatable…and so is nick, the third wheel…and so is daisy, who feels like women are forced by society to be ‘beautiful little fools’

“the iliad” and “the odyssey,” by homer. i will never ever be able to read ‘the iliad’ again without sobbing hysterically. :’((

“frankenstein,” by mary shelley. not only is this a great book in terms of philosophical potential, but there are so many great things to debate about in it. and, it’s written by a woman :)

“oedipus rex,” by sophocles. my favorite book in 9th grade, though god knows why my mother let me read it then

“metamorphoses,” by ovid. a collection of my all-time favorite myths, which every single person needs to read because it explains how the ancient romans believed the world operated, from the way the sun rises, to the reason we hear echoes.

“the aeneid,” by virgil. suggested by @catilinas :) the final addition to the holy iliad/odyssey/aeneid trinity, written hundreds of years after the last part, by a different author, and in latin instead of the original greek. chronologically ocurrs at about the same time as the odyssey, although from the trojan perspective.

“1984” (suggested by @alexickotowaffle) and “animal farm,” both by george orwell. i’m sticking them together because although the plots are completely different, they both remind me of today’s culture in rather unfortunate ways. but they’re very well written, and i do adore orwell’s style :)

“don quixote,” by miguel de cervantes. an absolutely hysterical book; i kept laughing out loud the entire time i was reading it. it satirizes getting wrapped up in the world of books, to which i’m sure we can all relate.

“hamlet,” by william shakespeare. finally crossed this off of my “to read” list and i absolutely loved it. hamratio (is that the ship name for hamlet x horatio?) is wonderful, the whole play is excellent, and i would highly recommend it

If We Were Villains characters as John Mulaney Quotes

Oliver

Alexander

Wren

Filippa

Gwendolyn

Richard

Meredith

Alexander (again)

James

I can watch Em in anything. I can watch Em read a phone book and I’ll be entertained. She’s a genius. I’m stoked on watching her in anything and do anything. - Andrew Garfield

Finding a vandalized Wikipedia article while doing homework feels like winning the lottery with the ticket you found on the street