Jk Rowling Told Me Personally That Hedwig Was The Duolingo Owl The Whole Time. Anytime She’s Not Actively

Math/Science Nerd Culture™

being really fast at math when you write it out, but taking 62.476 seconds to do 3 x 8 when someone asks you

you either hate odd numbers or you love them and this is causes great division of math nerds

teachers start teaching on the first day and assign homework

working with chemicals is only fun if it a) explodes, b) requires a bunsen burner, or c) turns a pretty color (like pink)

catching yourself using math in the real world and thinking “oh my god *insert 2nd grade teacher’s name here* was right”

dad jokes

not knowing you have a favorite animal until the existence of the water bear is made known in biology

getting excited when you can use a calculator

realizing that using a calculator means the test questions will be harder

one of your parents is good at math/science and the other is not

“i’m cold” “go stand in the corner, it’s about 90 degrees”

the textbooks are larger than any other subject

there’s always one historic figure in the subject that feels like a favorite uncle/aunt even though they’ve been dead for 105 years

the teachers don’t go in order of the chapters so you never know what to expect when you walk into class

there’s so many quizzes that you could fail three of them and get a solid A+ anyway

feel free to add more lol

every time i come across a uni/college tips post on tumblr i always soon come to realize that it's so america-centered and a lot of the tips don't apply to the way universities are in a lot of other countries, and that's just further proof that we need more studyblrs from all over the world and all kinds of institutions! it's always nice to hear about the way school systems are in other countries but also to find people who are going through a very similar education experience as you are!!

How to Handle Having TOO MUCH To Do

So let’s say you’re in the same boat I am (this is a running theme, have you noticed?) and you’ve just got, like, SO MUCH STUFF that HAS to get done YESTERDAY or you will DIE (or fail/get fired/mope). Everything needs to be done yesterday, you’re sick, and for whatever reason you are focusing on the least important stuff first. What to do!

Take a deep breath, because this is a boot camp in prioritization.

Make a 3 by 4 grid. Make it pretty big. The line above your top row goes like this: Due YESTERDAY - due TOMORROW - due LATER. Along the side, write: Takes 5 min - Takes 30 min - Takes hours - Takes DAYS.

Divide ALL your tasks into one of these squares, based on how much work you still have to do. A thank you note for a present you received two weeks ago? That takes 5 minutes and was due YESTERDAY. Put it in that square. A five page paper that’s due tomorrow? That takes an hour/hours, place it appropriately. Tomorrow’s speech you just need to rehearse? Half an hour, due TOMORROW. Do the same for ALL of your tasks

Your priority goes like this:

5 minutes due YESTERDAY

5 minutes due TOMORROW

Half-hour due YESTERDAY

Half-hour due TOMORROW

Hours due YESTERDAY

Hours due TOMORROW

5 minutes due LATER

Half-hour due LATER

Hours due LATER

DAYS due YESTERDAY

DAYS due TOMORROW

DAYS due LATER

At this point you just go down the list in each section. If something feels especially urgent, for whatever reason - a certain professor is hounding you, you’re especially worried about that speech, whatever - you can bump that up to the top of the entire list. However, going through the list like this is what I find most efficient.

Some people do like to save the 5 minute tasks for kind of a break between longer-running tasks. If that’s what you want to try, go for it! You’re the one studying here.

So that’s how to prioritize. Now, how to actually do shit? That’s where the 20/10 method comes in. It’s simple: do stuff like a stuff-doing FIEND for 20 minutes, then take a ten minute break and do whatever you want. Repeat ad infinitum. It’s how I’ve gotten through my to do list, concussed and everything.

You’ve got this. Get a drink and start - we can do our stuff together!

one of the most important things ive learned from upper level biology education so far is that dna isnt the god-like all-powerful beacon of similarity between all living beings on the face of the earth as high school science textbooks will lead u to believe but actually is, in fact, the molecular equivalent of a smoldering dumpster fire that’s in a constant state of chaos and cellular scandal like some highlights: 

-the parts of dna that just casually detach on a physical level from the main strand, do some sick skateboard tricks in the cytoplasm, and land somewhere else with 43552342 copies

-the parts that would do A Thing if they wern’t physically spooled up so tightly that the Make Thing Happen machinery couldnt get to them

-the dna thats in ur mitochondria bc the mitochondria used to be a bacteria that our bigger, buffer cellular ancestors just vored in the primordial ooze 

-the dna that’s in chloroplasts in plants for the same reason

-rna….bitches be crazy like what is she gonna do next?? o she gonna act like a protein now and do shit?? im on the edge of my seat 

-sometimes u just gotta make more chromosomes man like sometimes u just be hanging out and u gotta make ur genome 64 sizes larger and then change ur mind only 100,000 years later and delete half of it and thats just how it is on this bitch of an earth

-random shit from like 5 BCE is just casually left over everywhere like no susan i told u to leave that gene alone we might need it to fight dinosaurs again u just never know!!!!!

dna is earth’s biggest and brightest train wreck and honestly i wouldnt trust a dna molecule to water my plants let alone run my body but here we fucking are 

Source.

Das mikroskop. Theorie, gebrauch, geschichte und gegenwärtiger zustand desselben  (1859)

Source.

Lab notes!🔬

I feel like the section of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy where he warns about melancholy from ‘overmuch study’ is the 17th c equivalent of that post that’s like “why are we here? just to suffer? everyday I get emails”