You’re Doing Great :))

where! has! my! passion! gone! I had it abundantly when I was a child, and I must have dropped it along the way, but I cannot figure where!

At a crossroads

So here I am, sitting on the couch in my parents’ living room wondering how the hell I got here. Now that I’m out of college, I feel like that one shot in The Matrix where Neo tries to follow his mentor by jumping across the roof: moving forward but in slow motion. I just jumped from a ledge desperately trying to figure out whether or not I gave myself enough momentum to reach the other end. 

I’m taking a year between undergrad and grad, but now I’m starting to wish I had just sucked it up and applied during the fall semester of my senior year. I’ve got a good support system (thank goodness) and a job lined up for the summer but I am just so nervous. 

I feel like Evee, so many ways to evolve. Am I scared? probably. Am I gonna study for the GRE’s and take them anyway? hell yeah! Will I listen to a lot of kpop while I do it? Undoubtedly. 

I am so grateful to be where I am right now, but I don’t know how to leap into the unknown. And I don’t think anyone really does. I think that’s why I’m here, in slo-mo between two rooftops, one too far behind, and one almost too far ahead. 

Sorry for the rant, y’all! I love you, keep working hard, and rest when you can. 

And don’t worry, I’ll be okay 

Peace,

Lisa 

(ps. this is an accurate depiction of Kim Namjoon pulling me out of my own fear)

reminder to self: stop waiting to feel ready. you’re not going to feel ready until you’re doing the thing you’re waiting to feel ready for. start doing it and the readiness will come

Pinky promise to shine your light brighter in 2019 ✨ Happy New Year!

🎧: Promise by #JIMIN

Romance language culture

is reading a book in a language you don’t technically speak but have no difficulty understanding.

i wanted to share some thoughts on ‘온유하게 해요 (shine on you)’. everybody is already aware of the title pun by now, but there’s another meaning on it that rly impacts me & i want to say.

so as many know, onew (온유) is an actual word in korean. i wouldnt give 온유 an exact translation but it’s along the meaning of softness, tenderness, or mildness. i’ll use ‘tender’ here.

so, onew’s name is in both titles. ‘온유하게 해요’ means ‘to make (smth) tender/onew’ & in ‘shine on you’, ‘on you’ sounds like ‘onew’ too. that’s cute, but what i want to focus on is the verse where this sentence appears:

‘싱그러운 미소가 불안했던 마음을 온유하게 해요’.

my personal trans goes: ‘your refreshing smile makes my (previously) troubled heart tender’. note that ‘-했던’ implies past onto ‘troubled’.

now, what makes this verse so lovely to me is exactly bc 온유 is his name. he is 온유. then saying ‘your smile makes me tender’ ends up meaning ‘your smile makes me who i am’. and more than that: ‘your smile makes my troubled heart tender’ seems to paint that ‘seeing your smile makes me remember who i really am’.

isn’t that such a beautiful love to have? to remember yourself in someone’s smile, to find strength in them to never stop being own tender self through all the troubles that come. it’s incredibly romantic.

and if you think about it, this verse is so precious bc it comes such a long way: if jinki wasn’t named onew all the way back 10 yrs ago, this sentence wouldn’t mean much today. it’s a verse with a simple sound, but its meaning came together in a careful & rare balance.

it’s this sort of thing that adds all the magic in art.

I like Marie Kondo because I’m so used to all the rhetoric around “decluttering” or “tidying up” being about how it’s somehow immoral to own things and that we need to burn our possessions and all live in sterile minimalist Hell in a plain white apartment with a deck chair and one potted plant.

So I like hearing the tidy lady tell me that yes I should live in a hovel with a bunch of linguistics books and dragon statues and here are some ways to keep the hovel clean and orderly while I lurk in it.

It’s so refreshing.

Grammar Friday: Ya and Todavía

HUGE news for researchers, writers and journalists! JSTOR drops paywall

JSTOR Makes Database Accessible to the Public

“The online academic resource has made over 6,000 ebooks and over 150 journals accessible without the need for an online login.”

“Online academic resource JSTOR has announced it is making its database accessible to the public, amid the widespread closure of universities across the world due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The database, frequently used by university students for research and essay work, announced on Twitter today that it has made over 6,000 ebooks and over 150 journals accessible without the need for an online login.

Previously, students needed a university login to access these resources.

This is the first time that the database has been openly accessible to non-subscribers.

The database is also working to expand on the amount of free content available online to students accessing the database through their subscribed universities.

In a statement on its website, JSTOR said that it has “an expanded set of content that is available to institutions where students have been displaced due to COVID-19 through June 30, 2020”.

“We are working with publishers to make more than 20,000 books available at no charge for JSTOR participating academic institutions and secondary schools that do not participate in our books program”, the statement said. “The number of books available through this effort is growing daily as more publishers opt in.”

Universities that previously only had access to some areas of JSTOR will also have unlimited access to the complete archives, at no extra cost.”

PLEASE SHARE - THIS IS A PRICELESS OPPORTUNITY FOR JOURNALISTS, RESEARCHERS, AND WRITERS!!!