Some More Muslim Academia For Eid

some things i’ve learned while studying in quarantine

drink more water instead of more coffee.

weekly goals are bullshit. set yourself 3-day goals. you’ll be less laid-back.

don’t just mindlessly stare at words. before you start studying, know your approach to it. have a plan.

summarizing the concept in your own words is the key part of taking notes. don’t just copy things down, convert them into your own way of talking, your own vocabulary, no matter how dumb and unprofessional it sounds.

don’t let the “studyblr aesthetic” fool you. studying doesn’t have to be pretty. summaries and notes can be messy as long as they’re comprehensible. you can always rewrite and reorganize them later. (honestly, you better do. and you better keep them.)

don’t throw away the papers you’ve solved your problems in. staple them to the fucking textbook. you need to see them constantly. cause you’ll need reminders of how far you’ve came, when you’re feeling discouraged.

don’t be an armchair analyst for your issues. if you have an idea then act on it.

remember: the exact point where it becomes difficult, is where your growth begins. take a deep breath, and try to focus on the paragraph in front of you.

get off your high horse and understand that if you’re a zero, you won’t go to 100 in a couple of days. first, you’ll need to reach 30, then from 30 to 60, and then from 60 to 90. nobody is 100 everyday. that happens very rarely.

you need to have fun everyday. you need to have peaceful time every single day. even on exam night. especially on exam night, actually. so make sure you’ve studied enough so you can have some time to yourself.

once you’re on a roll and in need of some challenge to stay on track, start writing down your studying hours. tell yourself you’re not allowed to do less than 80% of what you did yesterday. whatever the hell it was, even just one hour. so if yesterday you really studied for like, say 8 hours, today your goal is to study for at least 6 and a half hours. if you can’t keep up with that, make it 70%, or 60%. 

be forgiving of yourself. be kind to yourself. even if you bounced back and lost your streak. start again. as slowly as you did before. take your time. it’s okay, you were there once you can get there again.

i’m watching an art theft documentary and they’re interviewing this art history professor from new york who was asked to go with the fbi to authenticate a rubens that had been stolen but it was a sting operation so they had to pretend like they weren’t the fbi, that they were some private buyer about to pay $3.5 million for it, and the fbi was like “this is a VERY delicate operation because you never know how they will react to what you have to say so let the agent do all of the talking, don’t say a word to anyone just nod if it’s the rubens, the last operation we did the guy in your position got shot because things went wrong in a second” and then it cuts to the professor’s interview and he says “i wasn’t going to fly down to miami to be a part of an undercover fbi sting operation to handle what could be rubens’s aurora and just NOT say anything. i was gonna have to ad lib a little” and then he tells the interviewer that when he & the fbi agent got to the hotel while he was examining the painting he started lecturing the other people, first on how badly they had wrapped it, and then about like how it had been painted, the history of it, what the subject was and what she was doing, etc etc, and he was like “i hadn’t taught a class on rubens in 15 years, so for me it was like being back in the classroom except my students couldn’t leave” 

attention

please reblog/like this if you post:

-dark/light/chaotic/romantic academia

-art

-literature

-etc.

I’m trying to find new content for this blog, and I’d love to talk with you about it too!

desi dark academia set in south india

"girlhood was as ephemeral as a drop of water on a lily pad." // chitra banerjee divakaruni, the forest of enchantments

dark academia critics

dark academia is like one of my favourite aesthetics however there are certain things/issues that bother me about this whole aesthetic

1. where is the diversity?

have you ever come across any dark academia posts that included any people of color. everywhere I go, all I see is elite white kids. I would die to see japanese/korean/indian /pakistani/ african/ middle eastern dark academia students often wearing their ethnic attires and embracing their cultures.

2. eat the rich

I know the whole theme about dark academia is ivy league/ rich elite students but imagine middle class dark academia srudents who are not necessarily clad in expensive attires rather wearing clothes bought from the thrift stores studying on scholarships, who own second hand books and antique/vintage items from some local flee markets or thrift stores.

3. fuck that Greek philosophy

not that I hate Greek philosophy but all dark academia posts do talk about is western art/architechture/ mythologies / history and philosophy etc. I would love to read and discuss persian poetry and history , south asian mythologies, japanese/Arabic/korean calligraphy, Muslim world's art and architecture.

4. what's up with that nerd shit.

why are dark academia students always protrayed as nerds, reserve, quiet, hates to have a social life, perfectionist who can't afford to get any grades lower than As etc like even the best students have their ups and downs, what matters is the passion and the will to do better. It's okay to have a life outside books, to have romantic dates, to prank, to hangout with yout friends, to skip classes, to be unorganized...its more realistic.

Really niche things I recommend to research when bored:

Judith Butler’s queer theory

Hofstede’s national cultures

Anne Lister

Creative nonfiction and Gutkind

The queer culture of Berlin in the early to mid 1900s

Stone Butch Blues

Geoff Ryman’s novel 253

A room of one’s own by Virginia Woolf

The effect of Ibsen’s play ‘The Doll’s House’ on Chinese feminism

Feminist economics

The history of the term “Spinster”

Lesbian pulp fiction

Queerbaiting in Marketing

Saladin

Islamic cultures and their scientific discovers in the 5th-15th century

Take this isolation as an opportunity to indulge in yourself and your interest but do not force yourself to do things, I know it’s an anxiety fuelled time. Please feel free to add to the list and stay safe!

*people choose to kneel during the national anthem to peacefully protest police brutality*

Some People™️: tHat’S uNaCCePtaBLe

*people march in the streets and harass passersby to protest safer-at-home orders*

Some People™️: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that’s their constitutional right

You don’t care about rights; you care about “your side” winning.

let me tell you a secret. i was bored in literature online class today so i decided to take notes in this handwriting. now, after an hour of writing, it's stuck with me.

in 1 hour, mind you, in 1 hour i converted my handwriting.

White America: “We need to keep our (machine) guns so we can enforce our own rights in the event our government turns on us.”

White America, when people are actually trying to protect their rights: ”Violence is not the answer”