Reminder To Self

types of study breaks for every situation

if you realize you’ve been studying for hours: grab a snack to refuel your body and watch a sitcom to refuel your brain. then back to the books.

if you’re feeling stressed out: take some deep breaths, text your friends, maybe stare at a wall for a few minutes. gather yourself.

if you can’t seem to focus: get moving and get outside. take out the garbage, check your mail box, maybe walk your dog. just get moving and get fresh air. it’ll help bring you back.

if there’s something else going on in your life and you can’t get it off your mind: write down what’s going through your head, sort of like a diary entry. it’ll help you work things out.

if you’re just mentally and physically exhausted: set a timer for 25-30 minutes and take a nap. any longer and you’ll hit REM and you’ll wake up feeling just as tired. once you wake up, get some caffeine in you.

if the material is boring as hell: find another way to study. see if there’s a crash course video online about it or draw out what you’re trying to learn in diagrams and pictures to make it fun.

if people around you won’t shut up: listen to some music. soundtrack and classical music is always good because they won’t absorb you as much as music with lyrics. white noise (like ocean waves, rain sounds, etc.) also works.

if you only half understand a concept: call/message a friend who’s not in the class and try to teach the material to them. this will help you mentally work through the material and will help you remember it as well.

London nights: quiet, dark buildings hold in their breath, streets shine with rain, strings of lights over an alley, the feeling of there being no one else in the world

comprehensive list of books that will make you think a lot

at the request of @uglydumbbitchdotcom and @dreamingmappist (just to let you know, most of this is european and pre-1930 so if you're looking for literature from other continents this is not the list to go to. i wish i knew more about african, asian, and latin american literature, but alas - i do not.)

a portrait of the artist as a young man and dubliners: short stories of a city by james joyce

anything by fyodor dostoevsky (specifically crime and punishment, demons, notes from underground, but really anything will do and i'm not going to list his complete works on here)

the goldfinch and the secret history by donna tartt

frankenstein by mary shelley

fathers and sons by ivan turgenev

station eleven by emily st. john mandel

the death of ivan ilyich by leo tolstoy

in the first circle by aleksandr solzhenitsyn

paradise lost and paradise regained by john milton

till we have faces and that hideous strength by c.s. lewis

ninety-three and the man who laughs by victor hugo

faust, pt. 1 by goethe

the ulster cycle and an táin bó cúailnge

the a wrinkle in time quartet by madeleine l'engle

grace by paul lynch (this might be sort of an odd addition but he's one of the authors who follows in the joyce tradition and this is a beautiful book with a fascinating plot set during the great hunger so it deserves a place here)

a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams

the plough and the stars by sean o'casey

the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck

common sense by thomas paine

macbeth and henry v by william shakespeare

a room of one's own by virginia woolf

beowulf

say nothing by patrick radden keefe

one hundred years of solitude and the general in his labyrinth by gabriel garcia marquez

the underground railroad by william still

the letters of vincent van gogh

my god, there is a lot of russian literature on there. anyway, here are the books that made me think the most and hardest out of anything i've read

Adapted from a workshop I did at my high school Writing Center. One of my more helpful powerpoints; let me know if you need any clarifications. This is all my original work; please don’t remove the source.

William Wordsworth

Things, I'm madly in love with:

books (classic and modern, poetry and novels, old and new)

penmanship

art (looking for art, creating art, being art)

vintage porcelain (especially with golden lines)

combine my clothes for that special look that I need today

Oscar Wilde

religious studies

tattoos

flea markets, second hands, vintage and antique stores, where I can find pieces with their own history

music halls with tall ceilings and great shiny chandeliers

Greece, Italy, United Kingdom

collecting different strange things – from animal bones and dry flowers to glass bottles and old greeting cards

natural history

botanic

creating my own beautiful world

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

— William Shakespeare, from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream“, published p. 1596

French Resource List

Hopefully even if you've been learning French for a while one of these resources may be of use to you

General

French dictionary

Best online French-English dictionary (which also has bilingual dictionaries for a number of languages) as it has example sentences in French with translations, forum, verb conjugations, idioms, and more

RFI listening and reading exercises for all levels incorporating the news into your learning

Grammar

Français Lingolia with exercises

Listening

Journal en Français Facile radio/ podcast with transcripts for each episode

News in Slow French podcast

Conversational French Mises à Jour with transcripts

If you live in Australia, SBS has a French news podcast

French dictation exercises write what you hear

Youtube comedy series Bref

Belgian LGBTQ+ Youtube series La théorie du Y

Youtube comedy series Le Département

French comedy series that has whole episodes for free on Youtube Fais pas ci fais pas ça

Skam France is a teen show so you can learn heaps of slang, it also has subtitles for each episode in French and English

Youtube

Home Language - vocab and grammar

Hugo Décrypte - daily news

MisterJDay - comedy

Le Monde - news but many of their videos have subtitles

Reading

Simple articles originally written for children, also has a Youtube playlist (1jour 1actu)

Le Petit Scribe reading comprehension and exercises level B1 but also has the same for all levels

Reading (or listening) comprehension - Le Petit Nicolas

Writing

À vos plumes - writing practice and grammar

Oui c'est ça writing practice

Proofreading checklist

Other

Thoughtco French articles on grammar, vocab, verbs, etc.

French slang dictionary

French vowel pronunciation part 1 and part 2 with audio

More useful French pronunciation tips with audio and IPA

EDIT: just remembered in case you feel like torturing yourself you can do Victorian year 12 level French exams 2001 to 2020 for free on the VCE website with the audio and answers available. It would probably be more helpful to not do it within the time limit and listen to the audio as much as you need to. You might also find the HSC exam papers useful from what I can see there's three different levels of French exams (beginners, continuers, and advanced) just find them in the list of subjects and you'll get to the exams.

English literature academia aesthetic appreciation post.

i really like being pretentious and all but what i actually like even more is that i'm genuinely so invested in this hunt for knowledge that i'm on. like,,,, i do wanna know every work of shakespeare by heart and i do wanna read the night away draped over second hand philosophy books and a worn out volume of the illiad and i do wanna quote french poetry and oscar wilde at social events and i wanna be what history would call an intellectual and i wanna live and breathe these things i care about because i have a deep and consuming passion for them and i want to be as immersed in them as possible.