endymionstudies:

aphotovici:

okcupidescapades:

okcupidescapades:

i feel like the most important piece of wisdom i can impart on teenagers is that no one–no one–knows what the fuck they’re doing

my brother is 26 years old, makes $200k a year, and just bought a house with his fiance. he’s the success story you hear about but never actually meet in person, but it all happened by accident. he wanted to go to college for clarinet performance, but he got rejected from all the top schools. so he decided to major in physics instead, and then went on to get a doctorate to put off being an adult for a few more years. but then he ended up dropping out halfway through the program and accepting a job with google as a software engineer. so to reiterate: my brother majored in something he was not interested in, and then he got a job that had nothing to do with his degree. 

he isn’t successful because he had some master plan he followed, he just stumbled around blindly until something worked out. and that’s what we’re all doing–i majored in political science and now i do customer service for a company that makes industrial-sized gas detection monitors. the marketing director at my company has a degree in biology, and my mom has an MBA and works at a middle school.  no one knows what they’re doing, we’re all just trying different things until something works out.

so if you don’t have a plan, that’s fine. most of us don’t. and even those of us who do, don’t usually end up doing the thing they thought they would. it’s okay to relax and let life carry you wherever it’s gonna carry you. because even though a lot of us don’t end up doing the thing we wanted, most of us end up happy anyway.

I’ve been thinking about this post since I made it a few hours ago, and I realized that I literally don’t know anyone who’s doing what they thought they’d be doing at this point in their life.
I know a girl that has a degree in neuroscience and works in a restaurant (and makes quite a bit more money than I do, might I add), and a guy who wanted to be a parole officer but is now a security guard. I know people who wanted to be lawyers but ended up not having the grades for law school. I have a friend who’s 24 and just finished her bachelor’s, and two friends who decided to go to grad school because the idea of joining the adult world terrified them.

When I was seventeen, I was 100% sure that I was going to get a job as a bureaucrat and save the world. When I was a 21-year-old recent college grad, I found out that it’s impossible to get a government job unless you know someone. So I gave up and found something else. I know my teenage self would be disappointed if she could see where I’m at, but you know what? I don’t care. Because teenage me was an idiot. She didn’t know anything about the world or how it worked, and she couldn’t have possibly predicted the curveballs that life would throw at her. And because I don’t know a single person who’s doing the thing they wanted to do when they were teenagers.

I know a thousand people who aren’t where they thought they’d be, and zero people who are following the path they set out for themselves. All of us are confused and all of us are scared, and it’s okay if you are too.

Honestly thank u, i needed to hear this again

i wanted to add some stories to this!! because its true! no one has any idea, or doesnt realize they have no idea until they’re way in

my dad got a bachelors in chemistry, then applied to a master’s program specifically to work with one professor. after he accepted, he found out that the professor wasnt teaching that program anymore. he finished his degree, said fuck this, i dont want to work in a laboratory, and went to law school instead to practice patent law and adores every aspect of his career. probably never would have happened if that one professor had stayed to teach.

my aunt didn’t have the chance at college when she was younger because her relationship with education (and being poor) just wasn’t conducive to higher ed. now she’s 35, married with 3 kids, and halfway through an associates degree to be a medical tech (and one of the top students in the class), because she realized adult-her was more compatible with college than teenage-her

my uncle was (weirdly enough) so highly experienced that he kept getting laid off from/leaving major companies because they couldnt/wouldnt pay the proper salary for a man of his skill level. eventually, he said fuck that and went back to school to get his doctorate, then a few years later got a job as a professor of business admin/marketing and he’s really really good at it 

and even the people you think have linear paths, good news: they dont. my mom grew up in the german education system, and knew from hs she wanted to be a lawyer. went all the way through the law course in uni, then immigrated to the us to go to an american law school. she got a job at a private firm doing translations from german to english (i think??) and when her contract there ended, moved to doing government work in a completely different field. i have no idea what she studied specifically at university, if at all. so even tho on the outside she looks perfectly linear, she really wasnt

education & career paths are not linear !  everyone has weird little twists and turns and some funky loops ! some peoples are just much larger and more noticeable! but please don’t think “that person has their shit together and i dont T_T” because i promise you they’re probably thinking the same thing about themselves

phoebe-does:

Something I just learnt is to stop looking at life as something I need to perfect and I always need to be improving and instead look at it as a project. Everything I do is something fun I’m giving a go and everything that comes my way will come and go and I will be better for it. I will put on my thoughts and my attitude in the morning as if they were my clothes for the day. I don’t need to perfect my life and I don’t need to always be right but I do need to learn and evolve and choose everyday to be a better person than the last but accept that I will lapse at times and that’s perfectly okay. Sometimes it’s okay to just be okay.

scholarstudy:

don’t let the insignificant things today stop you from accomplishing things that will benefit you tomorrow. mind over matter. move on. there are more important things to do than dwell and feel sorry for yourself.

stopslacking-startworking:

emmastudies:

conmentatia:

emmastudies:

What are your top tips for dealing with a bad grade or failing a class? :-)

As someone who managed to fail not only a class but an entire year of university, here’s what’s been working for me:

• Give yourself a specified grieving time. You’re going to feel absolutely miserable after you fail - disappointed, angry at both yourself and your university/professors, emotionally drained and you’re probably going to convince yourself that you ARE a failure, so why do anything, ever again? You’re going to lie in bed all day and wallow in your own negativity for a while, and you need to let yourself do this!
  But - after a day or two, you’re also going to need to have a stern talk with yourself, have a cry if you need to and make yourself physically move on from this. Get up, take a shower, have a cup of coffee and go for a walk. Make yourself feel like a human being again, and then have another talk with yourself - this time, focusing on “ok, so what can I do about this?”
  
• Identify the reason behind your failure.
  Did you procrastinate it to death? Why? Were you scared of failure? Were you scared of success? Do you feel like it’s too big, too much for you to handle? Did it stress you out to the point of being paralyzed to even begin? Do you simply just hate that class so much you’d rather feel like this for failing it than face it? You didn’t have the time? You didn’t make the time?
  
• Forgive yourself. Personally, I could answer yes to all of those questions. I was a mess during my second year of uni, and I just couldn’t dig myself out of the hole I was in. Everything piled up, fast, and I just didn’t have the energy to deal with any of it. I’m not proud of myself, but I also no longer resent myself for this. Even if you didn’t have any “real” reasons for failing, you still need to find it within yourself to allow yourself to move on from this. Otherwise, you’re just trapping yourself in a loop of guilt and self-flagellation which is only going to stop you from actually doing anything to make it better.
• Make a game plan. Sit down with your notes, and skim over everything.
  Determine what you need to do in order to get this done and WRITE IT DOWN. Find online resources that will help you when you get stuck. Find someone to explain the things that are still flying over your head. If your professors/assistants are approachable, ask them for pointers.
  Look for blogs or ask your classmates how they dealt with this class.
  If you get stuck on something, move on and come back to it later, but DO COME BACK TO IT. Maybe research what study technique is best suited for this particular exam, try to get some past exam papers so you can see what your prof focuses on - in short, try to make it as easy for yourself as possible to do the work and get payoff!
• Once you make a plan, do your best to stick to it. It’s hard to get back in the studying game after a long rut. It’s even harder when you know you’ve already failed this once, and the fear of that happening again is constantly looming over your head. But, the only way you have any chance of beating this is by trying. Get up in the morning, look over your game plan, do things over and over again until they finally stick, allow for it to take time. If you fall back, that’s ok, you’ll do better tomorrow. Take breaks, but don’t let them last a week. Get some sleep. Go for walks. Try to eat healthy. Even if you don’t put as much work in as you’ve scheduled for that day, that’s ok too, you did something - and that’s always better than doing nothing!
• Give yourself scheduled break-time! Prevent burnout at all cost! If you’re anything like me, you have now achieved a delicate balance of productivity and PANIC, and it’s very prone to tipping on either side depending on your frame of mind. Do anything you can to keep it in the productive zone, which includes giving yourself time to recharge. Take “activity breaks”- don’t let yourself just sit and stare at the material on your screen all day, get up and move around, wash the dishes, make yourself a snack, play some music and dance around… whatever works for you! Also, set an “ending time” to your day and STOP THEN. All-nighters fueled on the panic of “I didn’t do everything I needed to do today” are the absolute worst thing you can do to yourself. Get some rest and try again tomorrow.  
• Find a commitment device. Either it be an app, a studyblr, a classmate, a friend, your mum - whatever works for you! Find a way to keep yourself accountable for what you’re doing and it’s going to help to keep you actually doing it.

And, finally, the thing I wanted to share the most:

Try the 5-second rule to keep yourself motivated.

This is a life-saver for people like me, who procrastinate as a reaction to stress. The “5-second rule” was invented by Mel Robbins, who used this method and is now a successful business-woman after her life literally fell apart. If you have time, please do yourself the favor of watching this video (x).

In short, she has found a scientific way of beating procrastination, (even reigning in the symptoms of anxiety and depression) which is this:
Every time you catch yourself thinking about doing something, be it as small as “Oh, I should probably take out the trash.” or “Oh, I really should study for this scary exam.” count down from 5, breathe in, and GO. This is going to stop your brain from having the time to talk you out of it.

She did her research and found out that, by counting down 5,4,3,2,1 you are actually not giving your brain the chance to react in a way that’s going to stop you from doing whatever it is that you know you need to be doing, because it’s going to shift to the prefrontal cortex, which is the decision making part, from the basal ganglia - which is where your habits live. Procrastination is actually a habit your brain has developed in order to protect you from emotional hurt - of fear of not being good enough, or failing, or being laughed at, etc.
It also works for intrusive thoughts, I’ve found - every time you can feel yourself sinking down that hole, when your mind goes “Why are you even doing this, you know you’re not good enough, so why bother?”  try counting down from 5, take a deep breath, imagine yourself succeeding and go back to it.

So, if you have done all of the above, made plan after plan and scheduled everything to death, but somehow just can’t make yourself do it - give this a try, it might just be the thing to get you going.

Good luck, you’ve got this!! :)

this is fantastic, thank you!! x

This is awesome!! Thank you so much, I’ll definitely be using the 5-second rule from now on!

himeaegyo:

note to self: glowing up doesn’t necessarily always mean looking cute as hell. glowing up also means becoming the best version of yourself. cut out the toxic people in your life, remember to study well, becoming more open minded, taking care of yourself physically and mentally (!!!), be nice. what benefit is there in bringing someone down when you can be one of the reasons why they smile?

taliabobalia:

who you are in high school is not who you will be in college and who you are in college is not who you will be when you are 30.

when you accept that you are malleable and ever-changing, you will be less resistant to new ways of thinking and being and you will grow into the beautiful person you are meant to become.

resist the urge to remain stagnant. there are always things to learn about the world and yourself. let yourself learn them.

coffeeniastudies:

believe you can achieve at least one thing today whether it’s going to sleep early, eating that piece of fruit, walking for 10 minutes in the sun or getting that homework done before tomorrow. complete at least one goal, take your time, don’t rush. you matter 

emmastudies:

• failure
• stress
• disappointing results
• procrastination
• problems finding a work, life and study balance
• nervousness
• not always great or consistent grades
• varying degrees of mental health issues
• situations out of our control
• that ‘i’m not good enough’ feeling
• anxiousness
• lazy days
• regret
• tiredness
• burning out 
• low confidence
• sickness
• and many more

having a study blog does not mean that person is a perfect human with everything in life on track, in balance and with complete happiness. as a community, we need to remember not everything goes to plan and no-one should be expected or seen as perfect x