The basic reason for this sad state of affairs is that marriage was not designed to bear the burdens now being asked of it by the urban American middle class. It is an institution that evolved over centuries to meet some very specific functional needs of a nonindustrial society. Romantic love was viewed as tragic, or merely irrelevant. Today it is the titillating prelude to domestic tragedy, or, perhaps more frequently, to domestic grotesqueries that are only pathetic.
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The fact that slaves had a different legal status from free men was not considered particularly outrageous: women and minors shared diminished status. In reality, minors still do today.
Now there's an uncomfortable parallel to sit with.
I like that Vivenza included it, though. It made me stop and think for a moment about my own beliefs.
I agree that kids and teens are treated unjustly in my culture. So, what freedoms should minors have that they currently don't? How do you draw the line between protection and suppression? How much child abuse occurs because children are inherently more vulnerable, and how much occurs because we put them in situations ripe for abuse, and don't take their feelings or demands seriously? I honestly don't know.
It also made me look up the children's rights and youth rights movements, which are apparently two different things. And one is much more radical than the other.
I'm gonna have to think on this one for a while...
(Gloria Vivenza, “Roman Economic Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, ed. Walter Scheidel.)
when you start reading again and it's like oh. oh . the sun actually does still shine.
yes
yay it’s the weekend (time to review everything ive said and done to see if im a fundamentally good person)
*it’s
I love when you find an author who just has a good flavor to their writing. It could be the way they handle characters, the way they use certain tropes or themes, even the specific lilt of their words. Its familiar and comforting and carries across different stories, like coming back to a place of comfort and recognizing the furniture.
going from a long, intensive classical education to my current history major, i've had to write a lot of papers. at this point, i can write a 5 page paper in a few hours, and just a couple weeks ago i wrote a 20 page paper in a single day. i graduated valedictorian with this method (current cGPA of 4.0!) so i thought i'd share how i write them! grab some coffee and settle in - it'll be a long post, but i promise it'll be worth it. :)
first, the topic. if you don't have an assigned topic, pick something that fascinates you, something that you could write pages and pages about. you will. if your topic is assigned, find something in it that you find fascinating. even if you find your topic completely boring, there's always something interesting to glean from it! once you find this, you'll gain motivation, and that's half the battle.
write down a basic outline. when i say basic, i mean barebones. just a vague, 3-point general idea of what you think you might write your paper about. this will guide you in your research! you don't need to worry about writing your full outline just yet.
sources. after you have a basic list of points, it's time to find sources! if they're already assigned, you can skip this step. most of the time they aren't, though. this is the most important part of your paper. you can go to google scholar to find really good academic journals and studies!
generally, the number of sources you have depends on the length of your paper! a good guide is that your amount of sources should number half the length of your paper. so if you have a 5 page paper, 2-3 is a good way to go. if you have a 20 page paper, you'll want around 10.
evidence. skim over your sources and categorize each one under the point you made earlier. this will mean you have a quick reference guide when you're writing, so you don't have to go through a big list of sources when you're looking for evidence! under each source, put a few bullet points talking about the info that you can use for your paper.
outline. this part may seem daunting. i promise, though, it's one of the easiest parts of the paper! you may feel tempted to skip it, but having an outline makes your paper sound better and makes it easier and quicker to write. use the sources and bullet point info you used earlier to fill out your outline. start broad and general, then add details as you do your research! your outline should be about half the length of your paper. don't worry about making it super scholarly - this is just for you, so make it as informal and easy to understand as you want! be stupid, throw in memes, whatever gets it written!
every outline should include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. i can go over the structure of an outline in another post, but remember the 3 points you thought up earlier? these will form your entire outline, and eventually your essay!
finally, write! open a blank google doc and view it side by side with your outline. once you get started, it's a lot easier to finish than you'd think, especially if you took the time to outline! this is when you can make your dumb outline into something that would make the ancient philosophers proud. don't worry about perfection. just write it as you go. you can edit it later!
quotes/evidence. once you've finished your rough draft, it's time to add the evidence! some profs want quotes, others want you to paraphrase. either way, go through your paper and put in the evidence you researched earlier. don't worry about citations just yet - just put in the link in a comment on your rough draft. it won't be hard to fix it up later.
edit!! please, please don't finish your rough draft and be done with it. you can save so many points by going over it again instead of submitting it in a rushed 3am haze. fix spelling and grammar, add citations and a reference page, edit for clarity, anything you need to make it sound like the best paper you can write! if you're proud of it by the end, you know you've done something right.
congrats, you did it!! make sure you start your paper early and don't wait till the night before - your grade will thank you <3
I just learned about this passage from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (book) I'm so sick
Say what you like about opening paragraphs. Meanwhile, Agatha Christie:
reading any dostoyevski book your main takeaway will always be yeah no i see why every other author was in love with this miserable russian man . and justice prevails slow and greets you when youve changed too much to still be in need of its comfort