- Wear jeans/pants that “breathe” and bring a sweater, even if it’s scorching hot out, until you know which building blasts the AC to 60 degrees F and which feels like a sauna
- Backpacks with thick straps are your friend! Messenger bags are cool and all but if you’re commuting with a lot of stuff, symmetrically styled backpacks are better for your back
- You are your own person and you can walk out whenever you need to or want to, so long as you’re not disrupting the class. Meaning you can go to the bathroom without permission, take a breather if you’re anxious, answer an important phone call, etc.
- If you don’t like the class on the first day, if you can- DROP THAT CLASS AND TAKE ANOTHER ONE! It’ll only get worse from there!
- If you can, take a class outside your major; it’s a good break from your expected studies.
- You are in charge of your schedule. Your adviser and guidance counselor is there to ‘advise and guide’ but if you don’t like certain classes and you can substitute for others, that’s your choice.
- Consequently, if you are changing anything drastic in your plan, talk with your adviser and instructors.
- Pay attention to your credit hours and grades. Never leave this to the last week of school, you will be sorry and stressed beyond belief!
- Unless it’s a lab book or otherwise specified, go to the class for a week or so before buying an expensive textbook. Some classes, while having it on their required list, do not actually use the textbook a whole lot and you might find some of it scanned online. Rent if you can or buy used online (schools actually don’t give discounts). Use your best judgement on what you think you need.
- Tell the people who go up to you selling or advertising things you are not interested in that you are in a rush to class and don’t have time to listen to them. It’s less rude and they’ll leave you alone.
- The smaller the class, the better it is to have some sort of acquaintanceship with a couple classmates. They might save your ass if you are absent one day or need to study. And talking with them makes the time go by faster without it being so insufferable.
- You don’t need to join a club or sport, but internships are cool and useful!
- If you can afford it, take a day off once or twice each semester if you’re too exhausted. Just be aware of what you missed and if it was worth missing!
- Your health is the most important, this goes for mental health too!! Note: College-age/upper teens is when mental disorders like depression and anxiety are most commonly diagnosed. Most schools have therapy services, especially during exam time. Look into it if you need to!
- Communicate with your professor if you are having trouble with something. Anything.
- Eat and stay hydrated. Bring a water bottle and snack to class.
- All-nighters will happen but never go over 36 hours without sleep.
- It’s going to be hard and there will be times you might think about giving up. This WILL happen. You just have to make sure what you’re doing isn’t making you absolutely miserable and/or there is something rewarding and positive to look forward to at the end!
I did none of this and it bit me in the ass every time so this is EXCELLENT ADVICE.
ADDITIONAL ADVICE
Don’t let a mental health day turn into a mental health week because you will be so screwed.
Pay attention to the syllabus and do not lose it. A lot of professors put all of the assignment due dates in there and ONLY in there.
If your school has blackboard or moodle etc. CHECK IT. a lot of professors will only post certain info there and not talk about it in class
Check your student email account weekly. A lot of it will be unimportant junk but sometimes it’s the only way professors will communicate.
Check your student email multiple times DAILY.
THANK YOU. I’m so glad i have resources like this queued up in my ‘college’ tag bc honestly i was so stressed before
Advice from someone who really fucked up their freshman year:
READINGS ARE NOT OPTIONAL.
I REPEAT. READINGS. ARE. NOT. OPTIONAL.
Put them in your schedule, read BEFORE class. And summarise it. For bonus points, come up with some questions about the text and go introduce yourself to your professor either after class or during office hours, and ask them about it. This will make them much more likely to remember you in a positive light (and possibly bump your grade up if you hit a hard patch.)
Your library will have a copy of your textbook. If you cannot afford to rent it, you can go to the library and borrow it from the front desk for a few hours whenever you need it. It is there for you, okay?
SO DO YOUR READINGS.
I cannot push this enough: burnout is a thing. It is brutal and it will take you out at the knees. If you’re mentally exhausted, really do try to take some time off, even if it’s just a day to yourself.
Coffee will get you far. Caffeine overdose is a thing and it will fuck you right the hell up, so KNOW THY LIMITS.
(via starwarsisgay)
It’s Murder time at college so everything’s chaos
A few people have been asking so let me explain
Murder’s a game my college does every year where everyone’s given a plastic knife with someone’s name on it. The knives are shoved under your door at midnight and for the next week you have to try and ‘kill’ the person on your knife. If you kill them, you get their knife and have to kill that person, and so on, until there is one lone survivor. You can’t kill someone in the dining hall or in their room, or if they’re naked. I’m pretty sure the prize is a bottle of vodka.
It gets super intense; some floors unscrew most of their lights to make it harder to find the right person, or keep the fire emergency doors closed with black garbage bags taped up so you can’t even see into the floor. Some people walk around in nothing but a towel so that if someone comes at them they can just drop it and be immune. People walk in groups. Everyone’s suspicious of everyone. Friends are no longer trusted. No one and nowhere is safe.
(via littlestartopaz)
One of my favorite #Hamiltome annotations, from ‘The Room Where It Happens’.
Burr: I, who act like me all the time
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
I may legally be an adult but don’t be fooled, I have no idea what the hell im doing
(via ailleee)
(Source: milesmoralles, via dyinghistoric)
See, the problem with people who aren’t in wheelchairs writing about and/or drawing people who are in (manual) wheelchairs is that the people who aren’t in wheelchairs tend to think that there’s only like four movements that you do in a wheelchair. You can either push forward, push backwards, turn left, or turn right. And the characters do it all while sitting up straight or bending forward so that their noses touch their knees.
But the amount of motions that I go through on a daily basis are actually amazing. And the body language…you could write an entire book on the body language of someone in a wheelchair.
Like right now, I’m more relaxed, so I’m slouching slightly. I’ve got my right foot on its footrest and the left foot on the ground. Every so often, as I stop to think of something to say, I’ll push with my left foot to rock the chair slightly.
But usually, I sit mostly upright with my upper-half slightly leaned forward. When I’m wheeling across the campus, especially if I have somewhere that I need to be, I’ll lean and shift my weight in whichever direction it is that I’m going. It helps make the wheelchair glide that much more smoothly. How far/dramatically I lean depends on how fast I’m going, the terrain, if there’s a turn, etc.
Plus people who don’t use wheelchairs don’t understand the relationship between grabbing the wheels, pushing, and the chair moving. Like I’ve seen things written or have seen people try to use a chair where the character/that person grabs the wheel every single second and never lets go to save their lives. Which isn’t right. The key is to do long, strong, pushes that allow you to move several feet before repeating. I can usually get about ten feet in before I have to push again. It’s kind of like riding a scooter. You don’t always need to push. You push, then ride, then push, then ride, etc.
And because of this, despite what many people think, people in wheelchairs can actually multitask. I’ve carried Starbucks drinks across the campus without spilling a single drop. Because it’s possible to wheel one-handed (despite what most people think), especially when you shift your weight. And if I need to alternate between pushing both wheels, I’ll just swap hands during the ‘glide’ time.
I’ve also noticed that people who don’t use wheelchairs, for some reason, have no idea how to turn a wheelchair. It’s the funniest thing. Like I see it written or, again, have seen people ‘try’ a wheelchair where they’re reaching across their bodies to try to grab one wheel and push or they try to push both wheels at the same time and don’t understand. (For the record, you pull back a wheel and push a wheel. The direction that you’re going is the side that you pull back.)
Back to body language. Again, no idea why most people think that we always sit upright and nothing else. Maybe when I’m in meetings or other formal settings, but most of the time, I do slightly slouch/lean. As for the hands…A lot of writers put the wheelchair user’s hands on the armrests but the truth is, most armrests sit too far back to actually put your hands on. There are times when I’ll put my elbows on the edges of the armrests and will put my hands between my legs. Note: Not on my lap. That’s another thing that writers do but putting your hands in your lap is actually not a natural thing to do when you’re in a wheelchair, due to the angle that you’re sitting and the armrests. Most of the time, I’ll just sort of let my arms loosely fall on either side of the chair, so that my hands are next to my wheels but not grabbing them. That’s another form of body language. I’ve talked to a few people who have done it and I do it myself. If I’m ever anxious or in a situation where I want to leave for one reason or another, I will usually grip my handrims - one hand near the front , one hand near the back. And if I’m really nervous, you’ll find me leaning further and further into the chair, running my hands along the handrims.
Also, on a related subject - a character’s legs should usually be at 90 degree angles, the cushion should come to about their knees, and the armrests should come to about their elbows. You can always tell that an actor is not a wheelchair user when their wheelchair isn’t designed to their dimensions. (Their knees are usually inches away from the seats and are up at an angle, the armrests are too high, etc.) Plus they don’t know how to drive the chair.
Let’s see, what else? Only certain bags can go on the back of the chair without scraping against the wheels, so, no, your teenagers in wheelchairs can’t put their big, stylish, purses on the back. We don’t always use gloves since most gloves actually aren’t that helpful (as stated above, wheeling is a very fluid motion and gloves tend to constrict movements). Height differences are always a thing to remember. If you’re going for the “oh no, my wheelchair is broken” trope, nobody really has ‘flat’ tires anymore thanks to the new material for the wheels but it is possible to have things break off. We use the environment a lot. I always push off of walls or grab onto corners or kick off of the floor etc. Wheelchair parkour should really become a thing.
This is all of the physical things to think about. I could write a thesis on the emotional treatment of your characters with disabilities. But for now, I think that I’ll stop here. For my followers in wheelchairs, is there anything that I left out?
Also why isn’t wheelchair parkour a thing? Somebody make wheelchair parkour a thing.This is all REALLY GOOD and I wish something like this would be in more art guidebooks and classes.
One thing I’d add is that some of the posture stuff here is specific to wheelchair users who have the right chair; a lot of people (hi, past me) have to use chairs that aren’t at all the correct size, and that’s going to change posture, ease of use, etc. That’s such a broad variable that it’s probably useless to try and cover here, but it’s something to be aware of and research if it seems relevant to a character.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
can i mention how the kaiju have destroyed countless worlds but once they reached earth the humans were like nope. not today mother fuckers. big robots. lets go.
#they didnt account for a world that had the friggin audacity to look danger in the face#and build an appropriate robot
#CAN WE AD THIS TO THE MYTHOS OF HUMANS AS #SPACE ORCS #? #LIKE IMAGINE IF YOU WERE AN ANT EXTERMINATOR AND ONE DAY YOU GO TO SPRAY DOWN AN ANT HILL ONLY TO BE MET #BY A HUMAN-SIZED CONTRAPTION OF STICKS AND LEAVES PILOTED BY THESE TWO TEENY TINY ANTS #THAT THEN PROCEEDS TO KICK YOUR ASS TO KINGDOM COME #BEWARE OF HUMANS #THEY DO NOT DIE EASY #PACIFIC RIM
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
[video]
also if ur like “people who dissociate don’t know they’re dissociating if you know you’re dissociating you’re having a panic attack or a LIAR”
you’re legitimately wrong
a lot of psych textbooks say that im sure but a great deal of people who dissociate often enough can tell during it or in hindsight. if you experience it enough those sensations become easy to read lmao, if you think you’re floating out of your body each time you’ll eventually say “hey I’m floating out of my body so I’m dissociating” like. :/
it’s the same idea as “ppl who hallucinate don’t realize they’re hallucinating!” a lot of us do???? for example it’s kind of easy to tell that the man is a hallucination because seven foot emaciated nose less being with arms to their knees, holes for eyes, and gaping empty mouths don’t exist…like some ppl don’t realize they’re hallucinating but plenty of them do
it’s a very common misconception to believe that ppl who are “crazy” can’t tell they are
Yeah, it’s like this with paranoid delusions. I’ll be utterly convinced that my boyfriend isn’t real and everybody is just playing along with me as I talk to my fake boyfriend, or something like that, but then I’ll consciously realize that the delusion is ridiculous and unreal. It doesn’t make the delusion go away, but it helps me cope with it until I can grab a smoke and calm the fuck down.
Protip: People with mental illnesses are often really fucking competent at dealing with those mental illnesses. They’ve had to do so their entire lives.it’s all variants on the TOTAL LIE that “crazy people don’t know they’re crazy” which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, like the corollary is that if you know something’s wrong with you then nothing’s wrong with you? no that’s not how this works.
Actually, a lot of psych books have that patients will know if they’re dissociating. It’s one of the things you ask to see if they’re having a disorder that has dissociation as a root symptom. We ask “have you ever felt like you weren’t real, experienced thinking the world or people around you weren’t real, or experienced that you were outside of your body watching yourself?” A lot is easier if a patient knows they’ve been dissociating. It cuts down diagnostic time and generally gives the psychologist insight.
people act like deliberate dissociation isn’t a well known psychological defense mechanism for people who’ve experienced repeated trauma and learned to control their psychological state to manage it
(Source: crossthisboundary, via lupinatic)
elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:
Where are those woke white people at!?
The amount of notes this doesn’t have bothers me…^
*this is also the time for any all lives matter fuckers to unfollow me*
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)