Messier 66 Taken By Hubble Space Telescope On January 28 2021

Study Challenge (13/100) + Board Exams Study Challenge (3/21)

08/February/2025 (Saturday) [👩🏻‍🎤]

Productivity Stars: 0/5 ⭐

📝🌲: 2 hours

🎧: Sailor Song - Gigi Perez

💌: Despite barely studying anything today, I feel relieved. The reason is that my sister and I sang a lot to karaoke. My throat hurts from all the high notes I tried to hit, but voice cracks were the only thing that blessed my parents' ears. 😹

actually so upset that em dashes are being treated as an ai indicator— i love them ❤️

they’re so versatile and they look soooo prettyyyy too. i started using them after i read the great gatsby

i'm going to lock in for the month of october! so i'm making a list on here of everything i have to do this week and seeing if i can finish it

thermodynamics module

photography composition practice

titration procedure / lab / analysis / presentation

midterm review sheet

immigration research paper

particle motion lab

energy conversion lab

add magnetic field to ising model simulation

finish chapter 2 part 1 of cs textbook

mini-essay of music in great gatsby

practice test for analysis midterm

read chapter 6 of great gatsby

crossing my fingers that this holds me accountable. my procrastination is way out of control...

I know this is a long read but I believe this might help if you’re going through a burnout.

Last week I was so drained I couldn’t do anything. Let alone studying 11 hours a day as I planned, some days I couldn’t even pick up my pen and solve just one question.

Each day I said to myself “It will be better tomorrow. I will wake up and finish the things I need to do.” but every day proved to be worse than the other. My tutor was out of the city for a conference so I was on my own and needed to finish everything before he arrived. (I am a person who scolds herself if I don’t finish my tasks on time, even if sometimes my teachers don’t care, I do.) But I couldn’t finish most of them. Today is literally my last chance. I had to wake up at 5am and rarely take any breaks if I wanted to complete everything.

But I couldn’t. I woke up at 9, and just getting out of bed took all my energy. I went into the living room and fell asleep on the couch. For three hours, no matter how many times my mum tried to annoy me into waking up, I laid there without even once uttering a word.

And by my 1682597th dream, I had an epiphany.

This is my journey. This is me, working towards my own dream. People around me obviously care and feel for me, that’s why they worry when I fall behind. But if they had to give in the energy I give in each day, they couldn’t do it.

Because I wake up every day to my goals. Every morning I choose to keep going. Every second I am choosing to not give up on my dreams of becoming a successful person. I could easily change my mind any minute, choose another major, and I wouldn’t have to study as hard.

But I am not.

For 454 straight days, I woke up with this dream and there wasn’t a single day I didn’t want it. Not a single day where I said “Oh you know what, fuck it. I don’t want this.”

I had my days where I cried, screamed, even hit myself. I had my days where I was so exhausted that I kept looking at other majors I could get into but I never felt the same connection so I just stood up and kept working.

I am the one who might lose what I want, not others. I am the only one who is putting in the effort to make it happen because nobody else’s effort could make it possible for me.

So if I say “I did not have the energy for this.” they have to believe me.

If I am honestly EXHAUSTED, to a point where I don’t want to see my favorite pencil, it’s okay for me to fall behind a few weeks.

Now I will just get up. Once again. And do what I can. No rush, I have 145 days to go, and it’s better to actually learn the material than to have to come back to it later.

Keep trying. Even if it’s reading one sentence a day. Your dreams are yours for a reason.

Saturday, 25th January 2025

I’ve had a pretty productive day – finishing it by reviewing this week’s plasma lectures :)

🎵Watershed Album – Opeth (finally moved on from my binge of the song Bleak like 10 times in a row, lol)

my car

Why I hate the pomodoro method.

You’ve probably seen someone suggest the Pomodoro method before— you do short sprints (typically 25 mins) followed up by a quick break (typically 5 mins).

I don’t like it, and I will never go back to using it. Don’t get me wrong, it can work really well! My sibling only gets anything done if they use this method, so there is something good about it. However, I’m going to talk about the downsides and what else to do instead of this method.

1. It focuses on time spent rather than results.

Many tasks are quite flexible in how long we take to complete them. Take walking home for example. When I am in a rush to school, it takes about 20 mins uphill, but my legs cramp really bad. When I’m just listening to my music and vibing, it takes about 30 mins downhill.

It's a similar idea for studying. Apply pressure on your learning and assignments, and they get completed faster. Too much pressure, you get exhausted or can’t think straight. (HINT: Procrastination). Too little pressure, and it takes forever to get anything done.

Different results require different amounts of time and pressure.

Trying to strive for a specific time frame undermines what your true goal is: to get some something done. The repetitive cycle assumes a “one size fits all” but that is rarely ever the case. Saying “I studied for two hours today” means nothing compared to “I wrote my essay, read a research paper, and annotated my notes from yesterday.”

2. It discourages focus and flow.

When I was trying out the method, I kept trying to find the ideal time for work and for breaks. The problem is it's never the same. Some days, you are more mentally exhausted and need longer and more breaks, otherwise you are just going to be miserable.

As it is, the five-minute break isn’t long enough to go on a short walk, take a dedicated snack, or fully disconnect. It’s a waste of time that taunts you with distractions that aren’t conducive to a good work environment.

The opposite is also true. Good days can be rare, so when you get into the zone, there’s no reason to come out of it for anything other than a natural transition. A ticking timer to your productivity doesn’t help, and breaking up that “flow state” isn’t maximizing your time or your efforts.

I also haven’t heard many people mention stamina. If you are in school and taking tests, you realize they are typically around the same length (90 - 120 mins where I am). The pomodoro method contradicts this. For a lot of people, focusing and doing your best on a test for such a long period of time can be difficult.

Oh, but that’s just life.

Maybe a part of it is, but you can take steps to improve your stamina during test taking. Spending upwards of two hours studying or taking practice tests, especially leading up to huge exams, can make the test fly by. Simulating test conditions is also a great way to study or increase pressure, which is what long term study periods achieve. Taking longer study periods also relates back to breaks. With the same amount of break time, you consolidate it into a greater block. You can grab a snack, watch an episode of your favorite show, take a walk outside, or do your hair. All fun stuff you can’t do with pomodoro.

3. It brings technology back into the equation.

If you’re using pomodoro method, most likely, its on your computer or your phone. Which means you have to have a device in reach and visible (for work on paper) or be constantly switching tabs (for work online).

Distractions are a huge part of this modern age, which means that you could inadvertently be teasing your mind with a computer game or social media or whatever you enjoy. Even if you don’t give in, you *are* losing focus.

Forget the clocks, forget the devices, forget the notifications. It’s so much easier to be productive if you have nothing else to do and no distractions to take you away from something that, at the heart of it, you enjoy. Because if you hate studying, why are you still reading this??????

This is really long so I’ll make another post about different study methods next week.

final days of the year… ❄️ excited for a fresh start but also feeling the pressure of beginning new habits

i have a theory that trying to start new habits all at once is just going to lead to crashing and burning. so, only 1 new habit for the new year: journaling everyday.

it’s going to help me keep track of what i want to accomplish and my overarching goals of wanting to be stronger, healthier, and focused. i’ll try to build up better habits gradually, so that they last for longer than a week, especially when school is getting tougher.

only 3K words????? for the amount of pain this paper has caused me???? im so glad im done with this.

Sirius A and B taken on 13th December 2005 by Hubble Space Telescope

Sirius A is well known for being the brightest star in the night sky and a part of the constellation Canis Major. However, its binary partner, Sirius B was only discovered in 1862.

Ever since the creation of Newton’s law of universal gravitation, star mechanics became not only descriptive, but also predictive. Sirius A’s path across the night sky was unexpected. It wasn’t a straight line, but rather oscillated across its path. This caused many scientists to suspect that Sirius A had a binary partner.

Sirius B was first observed by Alvan Clark, who was testing a new telescope at the time. This was later on confirmed by other telescopes.

Sirius B is a white dwarf, while Sirius A is a main sequence star, meaning it is much larger and much brighter. 1000x brighter than Sirius B, in fact.

In the photo, Sirius A is in the center (although there are some effects due to the instruments) and Sirius B can be seen in the lower left.