Christ

im calling myself out on this one

Supernovas, Nebulas, and Stars captured by Hubble space telescope ✨🌌 💫

Do you have any tips on how to choose a college major?

unless you're getting a free ride scholarship or your family will be paying for your education, this will be one of the biggest financial decisions of your life. most of your friends and family are in student loan debt and hating every second of it.

first things first: why do you want to go to college? what kind of life do you want to live? will you be living it alone or with a spouse? will you be having kids? what income do you need to enjoy your overall quality of life?

have you considered a trade school or certifications?

when you consider a major, you need to be living in reality. not an ideal world where you can do something goofy and make a million dollars from it. be realistic, practical, and financially responsible. don't have your mind in lala land. I'm serious, choose wisely.

supply and demand. if everyone can do it with a reasonable amount of training, it will pay little. if it's hard to do and most can't do it without considerable effort/skill/risk, it will pay more. this is why fast food pays low. if any teenager off the street can be trained in a few hours to work here and be side by side with 40 year olds, it's not a lucrative thing. dental assistants and technicians make less than the dentist. guess why?

watch this video on useless degrees (not as in they are meaningless or have no value, but bc they cost money that you will struggle to pay back and the job market will not be kind to you)

and watch this one too

watch this video on good degrees

and this one too

if "following your heart" puts you 100k in debt, maybe follow your brain instead

you don't have to get a degree in something that you enjoy learning about but it doesn't translate well into the job market. you can learn about it at home, on youtube, at the library, you can purchase textbooks, you can take free open-learning courses. please don't spend 4 years cramming and going into debt for things when you don't have to. not all degrees are worth it. you're trying to get a job and live a nice life right? okay. act like it.

remember that school name is not the most important thing in the world and chances are, it won't matter much in your life. unless you're trying to be a doctor or lawyer etc, I wouldn't stress too much about trying to go to the best and most expensive school bc you'll probably only be getting bragging rights and 5 seconds of people being impressed when you tell them about it. this is something that has been socially conditioned into us our whole lives though, so I won't be mad if you can't magically stop that thinking overnight. shoot for the stars but don't be obsessed with them.

it might be in your best interest to go to community college and then transfer to a 4 year. saves money, and your degree will only have the name of where you graduate from bc that's all that matters.

unless you have a good financial support system (family with money, spouse with money), you might not want to go for a cute career that pays little. I absolutely love and respect teachers and things of that ilk, but if you're footing the bill by yourself in life, I'd maybe save that for a more financially secure time in my life. try to get a degree that gets you the most bang for your buck. I have a friend who wanted to be a teacher, but waited until she got married to a high earner who takes care of finances to become one. you don't have to do what she did, but I think it was a good idea of her.

a global poll by gallop revealed that 85% (!!!!) of people hate their jobs. that's tragic considering it's such a huge part of our lives and we spend so much time and mental bandwidth working, thinking about work, preparing for work, etc. You want to try your hardest to be in that 15% who don't dread their job. picking a major that you enjoy, are competent at, and pays well is so important.

notice that I said enjoy, are competent at, and pays well. you can love your work but suffer bc it pays pennies. you can have a high paying job but suffer bc it's so incredibly difficult for you to keep up with and you feel overloaded and stupid. you can have a high paying job that you're good at doing but you don't enjoy the work and it feels so boring and meaningless to you. these 3 things are hard to find in one career choice but by God it's something you need to search high and low for. if you can't meet all 3 points of the trinity, choose the 2 that matter most to you and go after them. you'll thank me later.

you probably will never be in the highest bracket of earners in your field. if the median income is 40k and the highest is 90k, you will likely be in the 40k range or close to it. don't be overly optimistic when looking at salaries for careers you're interested in. only a few people make it to the top of a pyramid.

also remember that changing majors is normal and what you like at (presumably) 17/18 may be different than when you're 20. I originally wanted to pursue pharmacy like my brother but computer science called my name later on.

don't be afraid to take time off to work and save money to avoid taking out loans (or at least to keep them as low as possible). don't be afraid to attend school part-time instead of full-time to help manage your course load. you can go back to school later in life and go after your passion projects when you can afford them if you so choose to. you don't have to rush things right now.

hope this helped

I love space, I love shuttles, I love telescopes, I love learning about galaxies and stars and supernovas and blackholes and planets no matter how far away they are. I love looking at pictures of the stars, I love showing those pictures to my friends, I love talking about new things I learn about space, I love hearing about humanity working together in order to see things millions or billions of lightyears away because of our ingrained want to explore and learn.

Hey, y'all! I got several questions on one of my posts, asking how I study for the LSAT. One of the best questions came from @procrastinatingculture. I won't purport to be an expert, but I have studied the LSAT for a few months now. I get consistently good scores with the following method. Of course, this is just my opinion. There is no single way to learn it best.

Familarize yourself with the sections, especially if you haven't seen the test before. Learn what each section demands from you and what skill set it is trying to test. For this task, I recommend Mike Kim's The LSAT Trainer. The book is really good for getting inside the mind of the test maker. It is my favorite prep book, but not the only one I have. It is notoriously weak about teaching logic games, which I'll talk about in a sec.

Take a practice test cold. Before you dive into hardcore studying, get your hands on a practice exam and take it. Keep yourself to the standard time limits, and don't worry if you can't answer all the questions on time. The LSAT is tricky to time, and learning to complete it is part of the journey. After the test, grade yourself. Note any sections that gave you trouble. Also note any question types that you struggled with.

Study logic games. Once you complete your practice test, you will probably find that you have aptitude for most parts of it. Often times, people who think they would be a good lawyer are correct about where their strengths lie. This is not the case with the logic games. The games are the least intuitive part of the test. They require a type of thinking (formal logic) that we do not employ in regular life or school work. Be prepared to dedicate a significant portion of time to logic games. To study logic games, I use Khan Academy's free LSAT prep course and Kaplan's Logic Games Unlocked. Kaplan is pretty controversial, but it works for me. Of course, there are plenty of books for different types of learners.

Practice and assess. Once you have the practice book of your choice, follow the drills there in. Once again, I recommend Mike Kim's book. It is particularly good for self-motivated students, who aren't seeking in person instruction. You should practice several hours per week for at least a month. Assess yourself periodically with a full practice test. You can purchase individual practice tests from Kaplan. I would recommend having at least 3. It is fine to reuse them.

Practice with the time. One of the toughest parts of the LSAT is the timing. Except for the very beginning of your studies, always time yourself. For individual practice questions, you can go over time. However, make sure you are always getting faster. Another reason I like Kim's book is the time suggestions it has.

Perfect practice makes perfect. After each practice, note your strengths and weaknesses. You will not improve quickly without self-evaluation. The Kim book and several others have self-evaluations throughout. Do not skip over them. You will get better through thoughtful practice, not through the raw amount of your practice.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. As I mentioned, this is just what worked for me. There's no perfect way to go about it, but I hope this helped someone.

*through gritted teeth* it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done. it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done. it doesn’t have to be-

it turns out that studying linguistics can change the way you think about gender, if only you’re willing to stretch a metaphor a little bit

Fata Morgana

a superior mirage caused by warm air resting on patches of colder air in an atmospheric duct that acts like a refracting lens. Objects on the horizon could appear to be mirrored, distorted, or float. This form of mirage could be the reason for the Flying Dutchman Legend.

reminder that the hit star trek voyager episode “threshold” in which the captain and the pilot go too fast, turn into lizards, and have lizard babies together, won an emmy

NASA released the clearest images of Neptune’s rings in over 30 years.