"am I Being Annoying" Are You Aware That My Heart Is Trying To Crawl Out Of My Chest To Get To You

nathanielthewise on ig

“The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it then you make it worse because you project onto it all kinds of bogies and threats which don’t exist in it at all.

Whenever you meet a ghost, don’t run away. Because the ghost will capture the substance of your fear and materialise itself out of your own substance. It will kill you eventually because it will take over all your own vitality. 

So, then, whenever confronted with a ghost walk straight into it. And it will disappear.”

— Alan Watts

I think about love sometimes. About how it’s taught and seen and felt.

I think about the ‘date nights’ and flowers and cards my parents spoke of and the rigid smiles when it went wrong. I think about the vacations and gifts and parties and how much they fought. Over the kind of flower. Over the venue. Over how hot the hotel was. Over how the party was stressful. It was hard for me to see how much they loved each other over their sighs and sharp words.

I was taught to love in grand gestures, but between each showing was a cutting bitterness that I was told was love. I watched the movies and my parents and tried to learn how to love my partner with disgust between my teeth fixed into a picture perfect smile.

We tried to love like our parents taught us and it almost broke us. Accusations hissed through clenched teeth and voices raised over clenched fists as we tried, tried so hard, to love like our parents taught us. Wilting flowers tossed in the compost and dinner dates spent in silence as we ignored each other over steak.

Love like that nearly broke us, and we had to pick up the cracked bits and figure out how to love like ourselves.

Now, I think of my partner, who was taught by his parents to kill what he did not like. I think of how he instead carefully uses a cup and paper to move a spider to a different area because he knows I love spiders, and he loves me more than he hates spiders.

I think of making homemade hot pockets for my partner, because he doesn’t like to eat in the lunch room at work and I want him to have something good he can eat by himself. He smiles so softly when he sees them cooling on the counter, and he knows I love him more than I hate to cook.

I think of him buying me radish seeds because he knows I like seeds more than flowers.

I think of me moving the wasps away from his workout area because I know they scare him.

When I think of love, I think of my partner tucking an extra twenty into my wallet when he thinks I’m not looking. I think of me mending his socks because both of us hate shopping and if I fix them, he won’t have to buy more.

We buy pizza on our anniversary if we remember it. We wait till after Valentines day to buy discount chocolate. We don’t hold hands in public, instead we bump shoulders when we pass each other in public. Brief and secret and ours.

We can’t love like our parents taught us, but I think… perhaps we love like ourselves, and that’s enough.

hey guys! for those of you who may not know me, I am Alexi (@alexistudies) and the long awaited masterpost is FINALLY here on how I study for Organic Chemistry (which i might have to retake lmaooo but that’s a story for a different time). Now, I don’t get the best grades, as my professor’s exams are ridiculously hard, but I have learned the material enough to teach others. If you’re struggling with how to navigate this mind-boggling course that’s pretty much like learning a new language, this post is for YOU! lets gettin it crackin’

Always start by reading the material BUT don’t go in with a cold read (aka just reading the chapter from start to finish) break it into 2 steps: SQ3R and then fully read.

SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review

disclaimer: personally i do this method by chapter section so I am not overwhelmed with material!

survey: skim the material. read the titles of the sections and subsections, and glance over the actual material within the chapter. take mental note of weird acronyms you may see or vocabulary that stands out. this will prime your brain for all the information you’re going to get when you go the 3R’s.

question: get some sticky notes and write down questions for each section in the textbook. for example, if you just skimmed the section on “Sn1 Reactions”, write a question down on the sticky note like “what does Sn1 mean? what does its mechanism look like?” and stick it in the corresponding place. even if the section seems direct and you don’t have any questions, create one regardless. This will help the information stick! Don’t worry about answering them just yet.

read: pretty self explanatory but read a section of the textbook. read it twice if things still seem fuzzy after the first read, and this time, go slower. now, there should be a sticky note where you wrote a question during the second part of this process. write the answer in to the question based on your knowledge from your reading. also, feel free to take note of any other things that seem to stand out on this sticky note. again, i do this section by section in my textbook so i don’t get burned out or overwhelmed.

recite: once you’ve done the first three steps for the whole chapter, its time to collect all the sticky notes!!! set them down on a flat surface in their chronological order and get prepared with your notebook/tablet and stylus/etc. now you’ll compile all your sticky notes into reading notes! during this stage, read your sticky notes out loud and supplement your reading notes by copying & annotating examples from the textbook.

At this point, you should have already read and done most of the first step. Now, its time to go back through and really engage with the material. As you skim each section, you’ll answer the questions you wrote on the sticky notes! This is pretty self explanatory, I hope. This will make sure that you engage with the material and not just blankly read it. I’m a person who gets bored with textbook reading fairly quickly, this really helps me. Its okay if you don’t fully understand the concepts during this step because you’re just putting your feet in the water.

Still confused on the material? Have some small concepts you just can’t seem to get yet? Its okay! Now, you’ll get auditory/visual exposure which will probably help. I watch The Organic Chemistry Tutor’s videos whenever I feel stuck and I take notes as I watch the video to ensure I’m really paying attention.

This step is to really see how much you know. Start with examples from the book, as the solutions are usually right there and they will walk you through. Then, move on to practice problems. In my textbook, they have exercises that follow right after most examples to practice that same concept. Once you’ve gone through as many of these as you deem fit, you should do the end of chapter problems! These problems tend to be a little more comprehensive and build on things from previous chapters, while also being more conceptual.

pls do your homework. it will reinforce everything. i’ve realized that the homework is not necessarily what will be covered on the exam, but it’s like … drills to see if you know the basics. but, this really depends on the professor and what they assign as homework! for me, the homework doesn’t even begin to compare to the complexity of the exams. highlight anything you get stuck on and once you’re done, go back and redo those problems + review that section in your notes and textbook!

Review sheets are a life saver because once exams come around, you have one piece of paper you can study from and you don’t have to carry around all your notes! for ochem specifically, i recommend making a reaction sheet that’s a flow-chart (i.e., if i have these reagents, its going to be a hydroboration reaction). this was something i was hoping to do before my final, but i just burned out and never got to it :(( so i need to practice what i preach either when i retake ochem1 or when i move on to ochem2.

bonus tip!

Ask yourself the following questions when you study.

can you name things? (types of reactions, molecules using IUPAC nomenclature, etc)

can you identify things? (stereochemical relationships between molecules, concepts used in a reaction like markovnikov addition, etc)

can you develop things? (desired products for a reaction, etc)

can you interconvert between things? (from wedge dash > newman projection, chair conformation > newman projection, skeletal structure > fischer projection, reaction > energy coordinate diagram)

Hopefully this helps! I enjoyed making this post because I do enjoy organic chemistry, I just really need to do better in the class next semester and better implement these study techniques (and maybe find new ones that work better)!!

Amazon Unveils a [Horrifying] Fanfic Publishing Platform

Today, Amazon announced the imminent launch of its newest endeavor, Kindle Worlds, a publishing platform for fanfiction. When I read the announcement, I was horrified, then angry, then sad. I want to take a moment to explain why this is such a tragedy.

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“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”

— Earl Nightingale