Try stuff. Put plants in your room even if you aren’t the best at caring for them. Attempt that dessert recipe even if it turns out ugly. Listen to that music you’ve been meaning to try for a while. The world is full of infinite sources of goodness and the best thing to do it to try and find as many as possible.

“Please stop talking yourself out of your dreams. Nothing is too big or too out there for you. What your heart desires is meant to be yours. You are worthy of everything just the way you are. You don’t have to prove your worth to receive what you want. ”

— @ the.manifestation.mindset

my favourite thing about buying books secondhand is finding the things people used as bookmarks in books that they never finished. here’s some of my favourite things that i’ve found!

chaotic academia things pt 3-

"There are three rules:

1. If you do not go after what you want, you will never have it.

2. If you do not ask, the answer will always be no.

3. If you do not step forward, you will remain it the same place."

I'd say that's three rules worth remembering. Now go forth and make your dreams come true!

-selfcaresquid🦑💙🌙🌸🌈🍀💫💕

— Unknown

[ID: Printed text on a pink background reading: “I realized there is no shame in being honest – There is not shame in being vulnerable – It’s the beauty – of being human. End ID]

“Friend.”

What, you don’t beg for kisses and have sex dreams about ur old school friends? Pfft, grow up 😤

An addition

Academic Writing Resources

General:

Introductions:

Body Paragraphs:

Topic Sentences:

Conclusions:

Thesis Statements:

Citing:

Argumentative Essays:

Writing About Poetry:

Expository Essays:

Research Papers:

College Application Essays:

Narrative Essays:

as a general rule. if what we’re calling ‘cultural appropriation’ sounds like nazi ideology (i.e. ‘white people should only do white people things and black people should only do black people things’) with progressive language, we are performing a very very poor application of what ‘cultural appropriation’ means. this is troublingly popular in the blogosphere right now and i think we all need to be more critical of what it is we may be saying or implying, even unintentionally.

There is nothing wrong with everyone enjoying each other’s cultures so long as those cultures have been shared. 

Eating Chinese food, watching Bollywood movies, going to see Cambodian dancers, or learning to speak Korean so you can watch every K drama in existence is totally fine. The invitation to participate in those things came from within those cultures. The Mexican family that owns the place where I get fajitas wants me to eat fajitas. Their whole business model kind of depends on it, actually. 

If you see something from another culture you think you might want to participate in, but you don’t know if that would be disrespectful or appropriative, you can just…ask. Like. A Jewish friend explained what a mezuzah was to me, recently. (It’s the little scroll-thing near their front doors that they touch when they come into their house. It basically means “this is a Jewish household.”)

“Oh, cool,” I said. “Can I touch it? Or is it only for Jewish people?”

“You can touch it or you can not touch it,” she said. “I don’t care.”

“Cool, I’m gonna touch it, then.”

“Cool.”

It’s not hard.

You want to twerk, twerk. I’ve never heard a black person say they didn’t think anybody else should be allowed to twerk. Just that they want us to acknowledge that they invented that shit, not Miley fucking Cyrus.

It really boils down to three simple things:

This is really useful to me personally because I’ve definitely caught myself losing sight of what cultural appropriation actually is, and why it matters, so thank you, and everybody else pay attention too

idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com

this post went from 600 to 2400 notes in the time it took me to write 3 emails. i’m already terrified for what’s going to happen in there

k but also, as an addendum, the reason we study literary analysis is because everything an author writes has meaning, whether it was intentional or not, and their biases and agendas are often reflected in their choice of language and literary devices and so forth! and that ties directly into being able to identify, for example, the racist and antisemitic dogwhistles often employed by the right wing, or the subconscious word choices that can unintentionally illustrate someone’s bias or blind spot. LANGUAGE HAS WEIGHT AND MEANING! the way we communicate is a reflection of our inner selves, and that’s true regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel or a blog post or a tweet. instead of taking a piece of writing at face value and stopping there, assuming that there is no deeper meaning or thought behind the words on the page, ask yourself these two questions instead:

1. what is the author trying to say? 2. what does the author maybe not realize they’re saying?

because the most interesting reading of any piece of literature, imho, usually occupies the space in between those questions.