I think I said role models too much

I spent a lot of last night lying in bed thinking about who my role models were, and it turned out to be more difficult than I had expected. There are so many people who I look up to and who influence the person I am. I eventually decided there was two main role models in my life.

The first is a person who has been in my life for pretty much my who life, my dad. I mean obviously our parents are the people who shape us most in life, even my mum is a great influence bu my dad has pretty much always been someone I've wanted to be like. He is hard working, most mornings he is away to work before I'm even up. But he is so enthusiastic about so much stuff, like his band and playing guitar and doing DIY and cooking and watching movies. He encourages me so much in everything I do. I want to be able to work as hard as he does and do all things in life that make me happy.

John and Hank Green are obviously major role models in my life and have been for a long time now. I definitely think that if I hadn't read John's books I wouldn't think the way I do about a lot of things, I have learnt a lot from them, good thinks that have helped me in the way I think about the world and the way I treat others. I think the internet in general has improve me as person but I don't really think I could get away with saying the internet is role model.

Models of Roles

One of my major role models is Maureen Johnson. She's very courageous in a way. She isn't afraid to be herself.   I wouldn't be surprised if her crazy antics have lost her some respect and/or opportunities in the literary world, but she does it anyway. And she talks about the issues she cares about and informs her fans about them and just generally seems like a really good person. I admire her a lot. In general, I admire people who are not afraid to be themselves.

Another one is Kristina Horner. She's always working on really interesting projects and she's clearly actively working towards her goals, unlike a lot of people (like me) who say they want to do things but don't actually do anything to make any progress toward accomplishing it. I admire that a lot and want to be more like her and make my goals happen instead of just sitting around waiting for them to happen to me.

I also really admire my best friend Jessie a lot. She is an incredibly driven and motivated person and she works really hard all the time, and I respect that. She also has a strong moral compass and is never afraid to stand up for what she believes in, which is something I need to work on a bit.

The Role Models

I found that I have many and few role models, or maybe that makes a decent number of them. Not sure yet. I do know that I have no one specific role model for everything. Every person that I look up to influences a different part of my life.

For example, both Hank and John Green are role models for me. They really influence me in my appreciation for learning, exploration and open critical thinking. I've always been, since before I can remember, curious about how things work and exploring, like getting lost in Petra (I'm pretty sure that's where it was) and being yelled at by archaeologists for picking up mosaics. But John and Hank make me feel like those qualities are valuable and appreciated in people and support my continued interest in learning when other people my age or who I've grown up around think otherwise.

My literature role model is always changing, this week it's Felicia Day. I don't know if any of you follow her on twitter or facebook, but I'm a fan and she's been posting a lot about books recently. I kind of shy away (a lot) from certain genres, I'm uncomfortable with stories noted for containing smut or that focus primarily on romance. I managed to find a book series that wasn't too heavy on those elements in Felicia Day's Goodreads bookshelves. The book was Grave Witch, I really liked the mystery and urban fantasy of the story, there was an obvious romance factor but it wasn't too heavy for me and it did focus more on the plot rather than the relationship, or at least it focused enough on the plot. Felicia is heavily influencing my book choices so I'm considering her a role model and I hope I run into more books like this one. I feel like I'm being judged on my reading choices. I normally don't talk about them.

But when it comes to who I am morally. I'm most influenced by my friends they make up multiple role models. I learn from other people, for example, I hear their points of view and weigh the reasons for my own every time there's a difference, I don't mold to fit other people, but I become more individual because of their individuality. I have many very confident friends and they helped me to build my own self-confidence. It's very difficult for me to form any relationship or feel confident but I feel that if it hadn't been for the people I did manage to build friendships with, I wouldn't be able to function as I am now or as easily make any of my newer relationships. Not that I'm dependent on friends being around me, but I grew to become my own person, I'm much better when it comes to stating my own opinion, being myself, taking risks I would normally be too shy or scared to take.

Those are all my current role models, they feel important to me even though they may not appear so in writing. This might show up on Tuesday, I spent over an hour editing the paragraph on literature I can't feel comfortable with how I've written it.

Goodnight, everyone!
Can't wait to read your posts.

- Sarah

A Whole Year!

I realize this is nothing original but... wow. A year! Already? It really feels like it's just been a few months!

Over the course of the last year, I think it's helped me become more comfortable with myself - and writing about myself - to blog once a week (well, usually once a week). I've blogged for  few years now, but only since I've been here have I started to feel comfortable with my own voice, rather than taking a very passive tone filled with phrases like "but that's just my opinion" and avoiding taking any real stance on anything.

It's been great to get to virtually hang out with other Nerdfighters from all over, and this has reminded me that it's entirely possible to form friendships over sets of 1's and 0's, without any face to face contact.

I'll be very interested to see where all of us, and of course this blog, go over the next year and farther.

Happy Blogiversary, all!

Happy birthday!

I was going to either bake a cake or buy one and put a candle in it and take a photo to celebrate but then I forgot. Fun ideas only work if you remember them apparently.

It really is hard to believe that its been a year, it really has felt like no time at all. It is so strange to think that we started of know each other by just our usernames and now we know each other as people as oppose to nameless, faceless internet strangers. I guess it goes to show that communities can grow out of groups that have just sort of been flung together.

It's hard to think of ways that I have grown because of this blog but I guess if anything I hopefully have gotten a bit better at writing. I will acknowledge that I do occasionally miss words out and forget to fix it, so I guess I've learnt that I really need to proof read. I think this blog has forced me to try and write more. I tend not to be able to write as long blogs everyone else, perhaps this is due to me using twitter and trying to condense my thoughts into 140 characters.

Mostly I'm really happy I took this opportunity. I can't imagine sitting on a Wednesday night now without think, "OhcrapIgottablog!" But that doesn't change how much I love it. I hope we are still doing this years from now.

I also want to pick up what Sarah said about how it's nice that we are all from different places and so we have so much more to share. I love that I can talk to other people who have had different experiences from what I have. On the other hand though, I would love to meet you all in real life! It's a shame there is such a distance between us all.

Anyway I should round this off and get back to my homework. To many more years of happy blogging! Hip hip hooray!

Blogiversary!

Happy blog-birthday! We're one year old! That just seems so unreal. In some ways I still feel like we just started this, but at the same time it sort of feels like we've been doing it forever. Time is weird. But we've lasted a whole year! Huzzah!

Since we started this blog, I finished my honours thesis and graduated from university. I've moved twice, including living with my parents for the first time in three years. This time last year I was still trying to decide where to go to law school, and now I'm close to finishing my first year. Because of that I've met a ton of new people and learned so many new things. It seems almost unreal when I think about how many of the words that I use on a daily basis I had never even heard of a year ago. Learning is good!

In terms of the blog, having a weekly deadline is a nice push for me. I like writing, all kinds of writing, but I tend to let it fall to the wayside when I have other things to get done, so needing to put up a weekly post has been a good motivator (even if my posts always feel like they're super short. Oops.). It's also fun to get to explore different topics and things that I wouldn't necessarily write about or even think about on my own, and some weeks have been a real challenge to figure out what I wanted to say. I guess I've gotten to know myself and my own opinions a little bit better from doing this too.

And of course, you girls! It's so nice to have other Nerdfighters to talk to at all, and you all are so interesting and intelligent and nice that I just love reading your posts. And I find that the more I get to know you, the more I want to get to know you, so here's to many more happy years of blogging together!

One Year

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY (Tomorrow)! I cannot believe it's been one year already. Happy Birthday! So says Frosty the snowman, or as for me, Gritty the Hawaiian Sandman.

I currently get to celebrate the anniversary of the blog in Hawaii so my sense of time is a little wonky and I have no idea if this is Tuesday or Monday for you guys. I could do the math but I am really tired right now.

So much has changed too. When we started the blog, I was looking at colleges, particularly Smith, now I've been rejected by Smith and have been accepted to a bunch of others. Previously, I had been trying to figure out whether or not I might need oral surgery and now I'm scheduled for next week. When we started the blog I had barely started my Extended Essay, now it's turned in to be mailed off. I got to see John and Hank in real life during the first year of the blog during the Tour de Nerdfighting and not just on the computer screen, which is a change I'm really happy about.

And those are just changes external from the blog. Because of the blog, I feel more comfortable writing, not better at, just comfortable with. Writing once every week has pretty much left me no choice but to confront my own writing ability, I'm definitely self-conscious about my grammar and comma usage but it means I'll have to pay attention more to the appropriate times in which to use them. That can't do anything but help me in the future. While I do miss weeks every once in a while, I think I've become more punctual, I get more work done on time and stick better to a schedule.

I also feel better talking to people. I was absolutely terrified when this blog began. I was so afraid that you might, in a way, shun me or kick me out because at the time I was seventeen and therefore the 'baby' of the group, still am the youngest, that can't change. I thought I would be too immature compared to the rest of you. I was even more nervous because I volunteered for Monday, which meant I'd had to post the very first post on a collaborative blog that consisted of four other women I had never before met. Yet now I don't feel that way, I don't feel like you're judging me because of being younger or a little bit more immature, or maybe you are and are just good at hiding it, I'll never know, but I have very little trouble communicating with people I've never met before, at least online. I still have trouble in real life, but emailing new people, sending letters, etc. it's not that terrible an experience anymore. I love this blog and I think I've improved a lot as a person from it.

Even more, I'm really glad I'm getting to know you guys, Katie, Rachel and Sophie. It's really great to read all of your posts and hear about the lives of other Nerdfighters and what you're doing. I especially love how we're all from different places and thus have even more to share.

I hope we have more good blogging years ahead of us.

End Note:

I actually didn't plan to do a blog today. I wanted to be slightly ironic and do a vlog instead of a blog from Waikiki beach, I made the whole video. Turns out I can't upload it to my computer to edit and post it. It was a really pretty beach that you will now not get to see. Oops.

It is 3:08 AM Tuesday in Massachusetts. It is 10:08 PM Monday in Hawaii. I am going to bed. Goodnight!

In which I am clumsy

I haven't really been up to much except working (and by working I mean procrastinating) pretty hard on college work.

Today was a fairly unproductive, I got up too late to go to college and sat around for a while. I did however decide to put on the very lovely necklace my boyfriend got me yesterday and then subsequently broke it. This was followed by some mild panic and guilt. I sat around some more and figured that only time I had to get it fixed before I next see him was today. So I headed out and luckily the nice woman at the jewellers replaced it for me free of charge, I'm not sure how I managed to get away with that though but I so happy about it.

After that I decided that since I was in town I should make it worth my time. I headed to Waterstone's the book shop and had a browse and ended up buying Zombies Vs Unicorns, which I'm going to start reading as soon as I've finished writing this. I mainly bought it because I really love the cover. I find it very hard to enter a book shop and not leave with something. I also made the discovery of the fact I actually like the clothes in Urban outfitters but I still have a problem with a lot of their prices. Also they had a Mountain Dew lip balm, I was very excited about this but again is was £5 for something just a bit bigger than my thumbnail.

So really my day was getting up, breaking stuff, replacing stuff, buying stuff and not doing very much work. Oh and I also watched three episodes of Supernatural, Glee, New Girl and Castle. Add that to my list of distractions. This will come back to bite in the ass later.

Catch-up

Well, since I didn't post the last time we had a free week, I guess I'll do a little update on my life in the past few months.

Law school got a lot harder this semester. Apparently after first semester we're supposed to "get the hang of it" and be able to do more work in the same amount of time, but that's just not how things work. Yes, I've gotten used to reading cases and can work through them a little bit faster than when we first started out, but it's not a significant enough difference to make up for the amount of extra work they've piled on. It does help somewhat that everyone else seems to be just as overwhelmed and stressed out as I am, so at least we're all in it together.

This semester we have to do a "moot court," which is basically a fake court exercise where we're the lawyers and one of our profs is the judge. I'm really nervous about it, but at the same time it's nice that we're getting at least a bit of a taste of what it's actually like to be a lawyer. At the moment, though, it's mostly just stressful, because the written part of it is due on Friday and I'm not nearly as far along as I should be.

Other than school, I haven't been up to a whole lot. A few weeks ago I went out of town for a few days to go to a friend's housewarming party. He's 22 and has been out of university for less than a year, so I'm super impressed that he has a house already, and he's the first one in our group of friends to buy a house, so it seemed like a big enough occasion to justify the trip.

Next week is my reading week and I'm really excited. It turns out that a bunch of my friends at different universities all ended up having our break at the same time, so a few of them that are normally in far away parts of the country are coming home for the week, and I'm looking forward to seeing them. Plus I'm pretty keen on the chance to get caught up both on school work and sleep!

Anyway, I guess that's it for me. I hope everyone is doing well, and that you all had a lovely Valentine's Day.

Where I feel justified in taking a teaching major without becoming a teacher

There were two questions that stuck out to me, one that I'm semi-qualified to answer and the other which I essentially spent four years learning about. So! Un-qualified answer first:

"What was it like to live on your own for the first time? What's most difficult and how do you deal with it?"


I guess I'm really just now living on my own, since rent is no longer optional (hey, it was a commune, things were different!). I'm a big fan of security, so probably the hardest thing for me is dealing with the unexpected things that crop up like, oh hey, my roommate has a horrible virus that is insanely contagious. I'm not allowed to work for a week!

My advice is two-fold; one, figure out ways to cut costs if you need to. I like having three levels of lifestyle: broke (rice, beans, and frozen veggies make up most of my food intake), saving (a couple small splurges here and there) and celebrating (usually for a special occasion), so that if something bad happens I know how to cut everything down to minimum to make up for it. Second, it's good to have an emergency fund as a buffer, and that's just something that needs to be saved up for (see "saving" phase of lifestyle).

For the other question, the answer to which I'll try to keep short and not gush over because this is the first chance I've really had to use my degree since I graduated, is simply "do you have any advice for good studying habits?"


Katie had some great ideas, so I thought I'd recommend a few things that a) I had beaten into my head as a pre-credential teacher and thus want to feel good about telling someone else :P and b) aren't talked about as often.


The first step I highly recommend is taking a learning styles test (I like the one here, though I wish I could find the one I did for one of my classes which showed a neat little graph of 8 separate learning styles). I've heard anywhere from 4-8 proposed styles, but it basically boils down to what sense you use to absorb information - sight, sound (both heard and spoken by you), or touch ("doing").

I am very, very visual, so I'll tell you what I ended up doing. I wrote notes in class, reread them within a week or so to get a refresher, and throughout the semester put all of them into Evernote (like Katie mentioned, in a simplified format so it wasn't overwhelming to go through them) so that I could have access to them on my phone or on college computers. I usually ended up making two columns, one with terms and the other with definitions, so that one my bus ride to school I could whip out my phone, cover half the screen, and do some quick studying.

Once I started getting more projects and papers assigned than tests, I tried to map out mini due dates for myself (i.e. outline, first draft, second draft, editing, polished draft), but I very often resorted to my failsafe of what my friends and I referred to as "fighting fires". It's very simple: look at what's due in the next week. Work on the very first thing until it's done. Repeat.

If you have lots of big projects that have heavy time investments that won't work well, but as someone who had many many small projects it was functional enough.

I hope this has helped a bit. If you've got any context specific questions (i.e. learning facts or larger ideas; specific learning style, etc) I'd be happy to answer them in the comments, I just don't want this blog to be massive. :)

Advice on friends

I don't feel that advice giving is a strong point of mine but I'll do my best.

Tips on meeting/befriending fun and interesting people outside of school?

I'm not a particularly social person and I find making friends a daunting task but somehow I manage it. My advice would be to look on your pants and see if there are any nerdfighter gatherings happening in your area. This how I meet some good friends of mine, it's particularly good if there isn't a really a well established community, that way everyone is kind of in the same boat. If there isn't any gatherings coming up, make one!

Try going places with friends and get them to invite mutual friends that you don't know. You might have some common interests.

Rachel's question about defriending her friend.

I didn't what to put as the question for this so that is why I have that.

I have lost a lot of friends over the years, lossing contact or being ditched for the "cooler kids" or a simple fall out leading to silence for over a year, so I feel I have some expertise in this field. I'm going from what you've said, I would say if you no longer speak and just drifted apart there's no need to delete her from your sites, but if you've had arguments, disagree over things and seeing her posts make you annoyed then delete.

You shouldn't worry about how she will react, that's not your problem any more because you are not friends. If she's upset over it, that's her problem not yours. Keep the people you care about and who care about you, no one else should matter.

I know I've not really wrote much about it and sure it will help but my feelings about friendship are pretty black and white.

Agony Aunt-ing

I'm going to try to give answers to two of these questions. I didn't really have good answers to many of the others, and these two sort of go together a bit, so hopefully there's something here that might be helpful.


How do you stop procrastinating?


I really only have one piece of advice for this one, and it will only help if you have the same type of procrastination problem as I do, but this is actually the only thing I've found that really works for me. Sometimes I procrastinate by reading or watching TV or deciding that I desperately need to reorganize my closet, but most of the time my problem is the internet. I use site-blocking software to prevent me from accessing the sites that I waste the most time on. The program I use is a piece of free software called Cold Turkey. It's Windows-only, but I know there are similar programs out there for Mac. You just type in the sites you want to block, and set how long you want them to stay blocked. Once you hit go, you can't get on those sites until the time is up. I find that the benefits from this are two-fold: obviously, it prevents me from actually wasting time on those sites, but knowing that I can't get on them also shuts off that nagging voice that says things like "I wonder if anyone's tweeted anything interesting" or "I wonder if any of my subscriptions have uploaded new videos," so that I can focus better on whatever I'm actually supposed to be doing.

Do you have any tips for good studying habits?


Create a designated study area. Do all of your studying there, and when you're doing things other than studying, go somewhere else. This helps make sure that you stay focused while you're studying.

Where applicable, review past tests/exams/assignments to identify your problem areas so that you know where you need to focus the most attention.

Condense your class notes into study notes. Only go through your full set of notes once, in order to create a shortened version of the absolute most important points. After that, read through the shorter notes as many times as you can. Try to use the important points to remind you of the smaller details, and only refer back to your longer notes if you need to refresh your memory on something. For one thing, going through 15 pages instead of 50 feels like a lot less work, and you can cover the same amount of material more times. Plus, if you can teach yourself to remember things in those sorts of chunks, you only need to memorize the bigger things to bring the details to mind, rather than trying to memorize every little thing in your notes separately. If you're super-keen and have enough time, try to make condensed notes as you go along, once you've finished a topic, rather than waiting until you have something to study for, because it will save time later and make studying seem less daunting so that it's easier to get started. It also lets you make sure you understand a topic while it's still fresh in your mind, and help get your brain into that connection-making mindset.

Take breaks every few hours. If you study too much at once your brain will just get tired and start jumbling things up. Try to use your breaks to do something that will help refresh you, like going for a walk, having a snack, or taking a nap. This will help you hit the ground running when you do start studying again, and it will also feel more like a break if you get up and move around and change gears completely, rather than just sitting down and logging into Facebook.

I sort of feel like I just regurgitated one of those 'study tips' emails that my university sends out every exam period, but these really are all things that I actually do, and they have helped.

Time for some (un?)qualified advice

Hi!

I'm going to answer Rachel's cosplay question since that will take up the majority of this post and it's the one I can most adequately answer.

“What's the process for making a cosplay outfit? I've always really wanted to try, but it feels so overwhelming.”
It's really just figuring out how to begin in my opinion.

Step 1 Who or what do you want to cosplay?
Make sure to have a couple of options available to yourself. Are you planning a monster? Average television character? Superhero?

Step 2 The purpose of your cosplay.
Is it for a specific event? If so, what are your time constraints? Also take into consideration how accurate you want your cosplay to be also your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to sewing, sculpting etc. Of course this is not really important if you can persuade a friend or family member to do all the difficult tasks for you.

Step 3. Process of Elimination.
Knowing your time limit, skills and accuracy to the character goal eliminate the cosplays that you absolutely know you cannot produce in your allotted time. For example, there’s no way I can make a Silence cosplay in time for Anime Boston in April, so that’s off my list. Way too complicated.


This also reminds me to tell you that you also need to know the materials you will need for your cosplay, animated characters are a little more difficult but then again they allow you some room to choose a material you’re comfortable with. And it’s more than likely that someone has already done the cosplay and has posted about how they made it online, you can find specific tips quite easily when you’re at a loss.

If you know your cosplay requires a specific material and it’s too expensive for you at the time, it might be a cosplay to work on over a longer period of time and not on a time constraint. The materials for my Weeping Angel cosplay amounted to over $200 with the foam, cloth, paints, wig and stockings.

Step 4 Get Started.
Once you’ve selected your cosplay and made a list of the necessary materials you can begin to get started. You might need some sewing patterns to plan it out, which are no problem to find online, you might need to modify or pay for them, but they are definitely worth it. Also, never underestimate the values of cardboard, pvc, scrap wood, and other various items you can find in an arts and crafts store, you don't need to break out the fiberglass. And as I said before, you have the internet, people have more than likely posted specifically about the character you're working on or cosplays similar.

That’s how I go through my cosplays, I always check for what I’m able to do with the time I’m given, when I start really early I can do more complicated and difficult cosplays because I have more time to learn and practice new skills. I have to save up for materials and plan how I’m going to make my cosplay. Working a little bit every day or week, spreading out the workload, makes the process a lot less overwhelming and a lot easier.

I hope this helps you at least organize your steps and planning. If not I can get more specific.

2. That was awful long so I don't think I'll be writing much more. Can't wait to see the rest of this week's posts. Bye!

Some Catch-Up

Not a whole lot has been going on with me recently; I've been settling in after my move and getting used to living in the city (and also working through that moment of "wait, I'm actually not going back to my hometown? WHOA").

I've finally been upgraded to full time at work, though it still doesn't pay much, so I feel torn about whether I should look for a new job or not. Though frankly, education doesn't pay much no matter where you go...

Following suit with New Year's resolutions, I've been trying to get healthier by eating better and working out on a regular basis. I know I'm never going to be someone that likes working out and does it for hours at a time, so my focus is on becoming healthier and getting to a manageable weight/size that balances me looking and feeling good with being something that I can continue long term. I'm not a fan of yo-yo diet and exercise routines, and I've been trying to lose this 20 lbs for the last two years or so. Since I've also foregone buying new clothes in that time (my logic being that I was going to lose weight anyway and need even more new clothes then, so I should just wait), I've given myself some motivation by putting money in savings for a new wardrobe once I reach either my target weight or size.

And man, I'm gonna need that motivation. Have you guys heard of P90X? There's a similar system out by the same group called, and rightfully so, Insanity. It looks like this:


While I don't imagine I'll end up looking like those folks (and the cheesy "you'll be sooooo ripped, this video is a miracle worker!" thing annoys me) this is a pretty quick, though difficult, way to get back in shape. And after that, maintenance is significantly easier.

Whew. Wish me luck, guys!

What I've been upto

I've been fairly caught up in college work recently and the process of applying to art schools. I really want to get into Edinburgh, so fingers crossed. I submitted my mini portfolio on Friday last week, now I have to wait hear back from them. I'm very excited about the thought of getting into uni and the idea of finally living by myself in a flat of my own, although my parents want me to live the halls of residency. My problem with that is that I really don't want to live with other people, particularly students, they're loud and annoying and fair more sociably than myself. But I think my parents want me to live in halls because it will be cheaper and there's a chance I won't become a hermit.

A couple of weeks ago I went to London with my boyfriend for the weekend and it was fantastic. We went to Hamley's, the big toy shop, it is foor floors of fun! And best of all they had a whole section full of Harry Potter stuff, like all the wands you could ever think of, James Potter, Lilly Potter, all of the Weasleys, everyone. I was very tempted to buy either Neville's or Luna's wands but held back because I didn't really want spend £20 on something I wasn't sure I could fit in my suit case to take home, so I ended up buying a deathly hallows keyring. We also went to the zoo, which was about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. It's not as big as Edinburgh zoo, so I was a little disappointed by that but it was still a great day out. I'm not going to lie either, I got very excited when I recognised the reptile house from seeing it in the first Harry potter movie. We went for dinner in a place in Camden called The Diner, it was so cool mainly because dinners are not something we get here in the UK. I could of stayed there all day and ate the whole time, it was amazing.

Other than that not much has really happened in my life and I don't think I have much coming up. All I really have panned is to finish all the books I started and gave up on, right now I'm on How To Be a Woman by Catilin Moran which is a fantastic book about feminism and a great read. But the list of unfinished books is fairly long, so I won't mention anymore.