Y’know, It’s Getting Real Tiring Seeing All The Study Aesthetic Accounts Post The Same Things Over

Y’know, it’s getting real tiring seeing all the study aesthetic accounts post the same things over and over. Overpriced planners, fancy equipment, delicate literature, cliché quotes, diluted palettes.

Show me the broke students. Show me the ones whose stress isn’t conventionally attractive. Show me the dollar tree notebooks and 10+ year old technology that can barely run the bare essentials. Show me the beat up books with cheap post-its and neon yellow highlighter. Show me the cramped closet or kitchen table you use. Show me the unfiltered pictures from that old phone you’ve never upgraded.

Show me what academia really is. Put the color in the picture, the vibrancy of personal drive when everyone around you fits in a monochrome pinterest board.

I’ll give my own example.

I’m disabled and currently unemployed so getting a degree is not quite the picture yet. I have a passion for theology, so over the years I’ve collected all my media from places like goodwill or garage sales. I communicate on discord, not zoom or linkedin. I mend my decade-old clothes when years of laundering thins and tears the fabric.

This is my study spot. In a place with roommates where the attention has to be shared, I’ve made my room my safe corner, where I can hide away from the stress of small-talk and pour my heart into my love of knowledge.

I cook my cheap meals and I clean my living space and I have trouble sleeping over the whys in life, looking out the window at the brown November street corner. Takeout is a luxury, friends are few but fond, and my notes would get more comments than likes on social media.

I know you’re out there. Let’s be friends!