me when home alone: *cooks great food, cleans the entire house, does the dishes, is genuinely happy*
me when parents are home: *can't even boil water, room is constantly a mess, becomes exhausted just thinking about leaving the bedroom, is constantly annoyed*
Is anyone else just instantly endeared by people chillin’ on surfaces that aren’t made for sitting? Like hopped up on a counter with a cup of coffee, cross-legged on the floor eating cereal, drinking wine fully clothed in a bath tub, sprawled out on the hood of a car with snacks for a meteor shower, etc? I don’t know why I love it so much, but I do.
A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life.
Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.
this fucks me up every single time
I never expected this to be my most popular poem out of the hundreds I’ve written. I was extremely bitter and sad when I wrote this and I left out the most beautiful part of that class.
After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.
She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.
Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.
The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.
The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.
Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.
I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.
This is so fucking important and I think it’s something I needed right now
concept: naturally waking up at dawn, there are no obligations for the day so your movements are calm and slow, you smell the cold fresh air, the window is open and a chilly breeze blows in, you wrap yourself with a shawl and freshen up, you make tea, the sunlight begins to spill into the corners of your home, you sit on the couch with a book or an article or some analyses, your warm tea is next to you, you read
Make a reference sheet with separate lists for each subject. This reference sheet is used to orient your daily studying.
List the material you need to study for each subject. Be more specific than you would be on a study schedule and make sure you put down everything you need to go over.
On your schedule, highlight the exam dates and deadlines and put down any relevant information. (Get the template here)
Using your reference sheet, assign certain material to go through each day.
Scheduling tips
If you haven’t been working on study material throughout the semester; schedule days before your study leave to work on study sheets for revision, flash cards, summaries, whatever you use to study.
Take a day to gather your study material before your study leave begins. Like the weekend classes end or so. This will save you a lot of time when you sit down to study every day.
Schedule your studying so that you start studying for the last final first, and the first final last. Make sure you start this early enough to give yourself time to revise for the subjects you need to.
If you have a day between each of your finals, take the night of the final off and revise for the next exam the day after. If not, take the couple of hours after your exam off then revise for the next one.
Schedule the harder/heavier material in a subject first, so that you work on that material when you have more energy.
If you’re taking subjects that you have difficulty with, or subjects with a heavy workload; schedule catch up days. However, don’t let that encourage you to slack off. Try to stick to your schedule and only rely on the catch up days if you really need to, and if you don’t; then it’s a day off!
Also, schedule days off… a day or if you can’t afford it, half a day. I can’t stress how important it is to take time for yourself, it’ll help you avoid burnout.
Disclaimer: this is the way I’ve been making study schedules since I started college. By no means am I claiming it’s perfect or that everybody should follow it.
I’m sorry I’m posting this by the end of the year when a lot of people are already done with exams, but perhaps it’ll be helpful for people taking summer courses now? And also for next year :)
