secretladyspider:

Some tips for college students:

  • Try to get some sleep every night
  • Don’t believe in the myth that an all-nighter is some glorious rite of passage, you need to take care of yourself and to do that you should be sleeping regularly
  • Try to drink water every day
  • You can, if needed, use a coffee pot to make ramen, among other things
  • The dollar store is a good friend
  • Sing in the shower without shame
  • CHECK YOUR EMAIL EVERY DAY
  • Seriously, check your email
  • Talk to your professors!!! Not just if you’re having trouble but because they’re super cool people and you should say hello!
  • Turn off the TV while you’re studying. Get off social media. No twitter. No – put that phone down – no – you can answer that text later –
  • Most colleges have designated quiet areas for studying in the library!
  • Take notes in class! Writing stuff down helps you remember it! If you have a lot of trouble with this, most colleges actually hire note takers!
  • Don’t be too timid to ask that question! Raise your hand!
  • Remember that you are paying for an education, and if your professor isn’t doing their job you have every right to complain. They do not get to treat you like dirt or be lazy just because they feel entitled or have tenure. You are paying for a service and they better fucking give you that service.
  • If you’re gonna have sex, remember to use protection. Condoms are everyone’s friend!
  • If you are in an uncomfortable situation regarding a sexual encounter, you have every right to leave! If something happens, report it without shame! Consent is always necessary! Always! On both ends! 
  • If you aren’t clear on whether the person is consenting, straight up ask! If you get anything less than an enthusiastic yes, verbally, STOP EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY! 
  • IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS AGAINST YOUR WILL. EVER. NEVER EVER. ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS FUCKKNG GARBAGE.
  • Depressed and anxious? Overwhelmed? Everything is too much all at once? Go to your colleges counseling center. Pretty much every college has one now and it’s good to talk to someone; some can even prescribe medication.
  • Stretch every morning
  • It’s okay to not wear makeup to class if you wake up late! It’s totally fine!!!
  • Grades are harder to obtain in college. A high school A is like a college C.
  • So don’t be quite so hard on yourself.
  • Tea is a great alternative to coffee. But go easy on energy drinks, they’re really bad for your kidneys. 
  • Water! Water! Water! 
  • The “Freshman 15″ is kind of a myth because honestly around your early 20′s your metabolism changes a bit, and starving yourself to try to make sure you don’t gain weight isn’t going to help anyone least of all you, so seriously, don’t worry about it.
  • Put your keys in the same place every night. No really. You will lose them frequently if you don’t do this, there’s already so much to keep track of
  • Study hard, but also give yourself a break.
  • You get out of it what you put in, but if it’s killing you you aren’t going to get anything out of it, so seriously, please take breaks now and then.
  • You’re going to have to say no now and then to hanging out with people. That’s totally okay to do for any reason that you need to.
  • Be your own advocate. No one else is going to do it. That assignment not in the grade book? That professor not doing his job? Have a disability and need accommodations? You have to be the person who says something.
  • If you figure out that you can’t do as much as other students (like take as many classes) that’s fine!!! Take as long as you need to graduate. It’s better than running yourself into the ground.
  • Remember that being a workaholic is glorified in college but don’t fall for the myth! YOU matter more than your grades!!!! You don’t have to be in every extra curricular!! You don’t have to try to do all the things!!! Take breaks!!!!
  • It’s okay if you figure out that college isn’t the best path for you. There are options!
  • Take photos of everything!
  • Talk to your roommate about something if it bugs you. You are going to be living with that person for a few months; talk to them directly about the problem. No passive aggressive bullshit. For example, “it bothers me when you drink my soda without asking. Can you please stop doing that?” You state what the problem is, not dodge around it, and asked for a solution. There you go. Simple. 
  • If you really hate living with someone, and they ask you if you wanna live with them again, say no. You don’t have to make yourself miserable to make someone else happy.
  • Forgive your roommate if they’re messier than you might like – and talk to them about it! Maybe there’s a reason why they haven’t been cleaning!
  • There is no shame in being an utter nerd, especially in college
  • You don’t have to be who your parents want you to be. You are in college for YOU. Not for them. 
  • That weird social event? Check it out! That person you think you have a crush on? Talk to them! Don’t be afraid to stick your neck out! 
  • You don’t have to find your soulmate in college. Marrying the wrong person is much worse than not marrying at all.
  • In the end, remember that this stuff is important, but you should only be sacrificing so much of yourself for your education. You are always, always, always more important than your grades or a degree. Always.

Invisibility is Not a Privilege.

a-spec-tacular:

Invisibility means every person you come out to requires a vocabulary lesson.

Invisibility means the very nature of your identity is up for debate.

Invisibility means years feeling alone, broken, and unnatural.

Invisibility means you might not even consider the possibility that you’re anything but what society says you can be.

Invisibility means you have to find out about your own identity from strangers in small, distant corners of the internet.

Invisibility means being taught in school that your orientation makes you inhuman.

Invisibility means being told by educated professionals that your orientation is pathological, a mental illness, and Must Be Fixed.

Invisibility means taking an extra year to convince yourself that your orientation could even exist before you even beginning to accept yourself as what you are.

Invisibility means coming up with an arsenal of excuses for your lack of Normality, an army of justifications for living a life that makes you just a little more comfortable.

Invisibility means “acceptance” comes at the price of breaking up and stuffing away the things that make you you, and struggling to force yourself into a hole that doesn’t fit.

Invisibility means forcing yourself into relationships and acts that you don’t want because the alternative is taboo.

Invisibility means you can never really tell them who you are.

Invisibility means you can’t even feel pride in your community half the time, because the world is intent on destroying what little of a community there is.

Invisibility means facing a world of people who would have you bow your head and let them rewrite your identity for you; who demand your complacence while they redefine the things that make you who you are.

Invisibility means your suffering doesn’t even matter to those supposedly fighting to End All Suffering.

Invisibility means shame.

Invisibility means denial.

Invisibility means loneliness.

Invisibility is not a privilege.

You know another storyline/trope I’m really tired of? Character gets injured. Character gets prescribed opiate(usually Vicodin). Character gets addicted to pain meds. I’m tired of it. Do better writers. Do better.

fuck it until you make it

brendaonao3:

naomisalman:

gather round, folks, that i may pass down the tale of Fuck-It Jonn, because that dude is just the GREATEST FUCKING CONMAN in the WORLD, and he WASN’T EVEN TRYING. he absolutely fucking STUMBLED ON ACCIDENT into THE SCAM THAT WOULD DEFINE HIS ENTIRE LIFE. the lie that transformed his ENTIRE EXISTENCE out of SHEER RANDOM BULLSHIT.

and his sole motivation was to EAT FINGER FOOD.

consider:

in the Wayback Days™ before i was born, the people who would later become my parents had this friend named… yeah, let’s say jonn. i’d rather not say his real name. bitches not snitches, and all that.

so. france in the late 80s. jonn and my parents had just finished school and all found jobs in computer engineering. (not that they STUDIED computer engineering, mind you. no, they were all studying how to become fish farmers or some shit. but those were simpler times, when knowing how to turn the fucking screen on got you a comfortable salary at the ripe old age of 24 years old.)

except that jonn, who was a chill hippie kind of dude, was bored to death by his desk job. so bored that he decided to just up and quit. “fuck it”, was basically jonn’s motto. fuck it, he’d find something better! fuck it, and things would work out! EXCEPT (as you may have guessed) THEY DIDN’T. for months and months he didn’t find another job. and so he ended up depressed, struggling, and eating dinner at my future-parents’ tiny apartment, three times a week, so he wouldn’t literally starve.

time went by. jonn was still unemployed. so before his resources hit rock bottom, jonn did the only logical, reasonable thing. what’s that, you ask? begged for his old job back? went back to school? crawled home to his parents? ha ha! obviously you do not share jonn’s ADVENTUROUS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT. and also you lack his BIZARRE LOGIC AND PLAIN WEIRD APPROACH TO LIFE.

what jonn did was: say “fuck it” (again) and leave for thailand.

because you see, thailand was cheap by french standards. so cheap that even a penniless dude on unemployment could live there for weeks on end, spending much less than he would have in france, as long as he didn’t mind roughing it. and jonn didn’t mind! “fuck it”, he’d said. and by god, he would stand by his words!

so jonn gamely scrounged up the money for the plane ticket and then… yeah. basically bummed it out in thailand. for two months. seeing the sights. sleeping on the street. making new friends.

and one of these news friends turned out to be very adept at FORGING PAPERS.

huh, jonn said to himself (probably high at the time) this sounds not at all shifty and more like a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY; what could POSSIBLY GO WRONG. my new thai best friend is even offering me a FAMILY DISCOUNT. for fake papers. fuck it! let’s have some!

as far as i can tell, jonn… didn’t even need fake papers?? like, he was literally just trying not to pass up on an opportunity here. so he smoked some more weed (i can only assume) and got A BRILLIANT IDEA. fake ID card? LAME. fake driver’s licence? HACKNEYED. fake medical degree? PEDESTRIAN. no! jonn got himself a fake press card.

but why??

well, OBVIOUSLY, just so he could get into cultural events for free – conferences, art premieres, etc – and eat all the finger food. that was his grand plan. stroll into press-only events, wave his poorly-made card around, and gorge himself on canapés. no more going hungry! ever! jonn would live off tiny slices of toasted foie gras and flutes of cheap champagne for the rest of his life!

so now jonn, Very Obviously Fake Journalist™, is back in france and he’s DOING THE THING. and guess what? this was before google. before facebook. before linkedin. impersonating a journalist was very easy. if people asked where you worked you just said you were freelance, then steered the conversation to current politics and stealthily devoured the entire buffet while everybody was busy debating.

and so. this is what jonn is doing. his monumentally stupid plan is actually working. this is how he eats. with thai-made fake papers and sheer fucking confidence. and of course people start noticing him eventually! jonn is always fucking there! at all and any events in paris! because, again, THIS IS HOW HE EATS! but it’s always the same people running around in these circles, anyway. so nobody’s surprised to see the same dudes popping up over and over again. jonn blends in! and jonn is very good at making friends. and changing the subject. and eating canapés.

and then ONE DAY

one of jonn’s newfangled journalist friends (a REAL journalist, mind you, who has NO IDEA that jonn isn’t What He Seems) basically goes: “dude i’m so swamped rn. everyone wants everything all at once. fuck. shit. are you swamped too?”

“oh, for sure,” jonn says through a mouthful of his twenty-ninth serving of canapés that night. “not a second to myself”

“god. fuck. tell me about it. shit. i’m just so damn swamped.” Real Journalist shakes his head. “if i could only find someone to cover for me on this one article.”

now, i know i said before that jonn was smoking weed. but i must confess now i said it for humorous effect. i have no idea if jonn’s ever been within five hundred yards of a blunt his whole life. but what you must understand is that jonn is Chill™ on like. a soul-deep level. his whole mind is one long exhale of smoke followed by the words “fuck it”. this is a man who left his job for no reason, lived in thailand on a tourist’s visa for two months, got fake papers there for the lol of it all, and is now living off press-only events in paris. jonn was BORN HIGH.

SO. when RJ asks him: “dude. jonn. you said you were working freelance. i know you’re busy but don’t you think you could maybe cover for me? just this once?”

jonn NATURALLY answers: “fuck it. sure”

then goes to an unemployment center and applies for one of their free one-week classes. on journalism. jonn spends ALL OF ONE WEEK learning How To Write An Article Like A Real Journalist With A Real Press Card. then writes the article. basically bullshitting his way through that thing. half-assing the life out of it. faking his heart out. because why not? FUCK IT.

i have NO IDEA if he actually did a good job or not. but it was in fact good enough for RJ who really must have been truly swamped, and was so truly grateful that he told all of their mutual journalists friends. who were ALL SWAMPED. i’m given to understand it’s the natural state of the journalist in the wild.

and so jonn is now REGULARLY COVERING FOR ALL SORTS OF JOURNALISTS.

not making much money i assume. but still, not bad for a dude who studied journalism for five whole days.

and well, it’s kinda fun! better than moping around at home waiting for the next free canapé press-only premiere. so jonn keeps at it. and eventually it occurs to him that hey! he spent two months in thailand. why not make an article out of that? so he writes himself a lil paper, retelling his Bumtastic Adventures in the Land of Thai People, Cheap Living and Forged Papers (That Last One Having Nothing to Do With Him Personally of Course). and he’s kinda proud of it. so much that he gives it to his journalist friends. can they maybe pass it around? see if anybody would be interested in publishing it? for a modest fee and some more canapés?

and yeah. someone was in fact interested in publishing it. and that someone was:

THE

NATIONAL

GEOGRAPHIC

(french edition.)

so jonn got a REAL press card. got a FULL-TIME JOB at the national geographic. and spent the REST OF HIS WORK LIFE traveling abroad for six months, then going back to paris the rest of the year to write about his wacky journeys. he’s retired now, having published several books full of his articles and photographs. he’s bought a b&b in the french countryside with all his money. and continues to say “fuck it” to any problem that comes his way like the absolute fucking legend he is.

as far as i know, none of his journalist buddies nor his boss ever found out about any of this.

Okay, this needs to be a movie SO bad