GUESS WHO'S BACK!!

We went to the local observatory tonight but when we got there, there was a HUGE line of people. Whoops. It’s was still really pretty and we got to see an amazing view of the stars.

These are my attempts to take a picture of the sky with my phone but they didn’t turn out very well. I don’t even remember what I was trying to photograph. Next time, I’ll try to bring an actual camera.

I think the brightest one in the left picture might be Jupiter???? lol 🥲

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.

“learning is never done without error, and defeat,"

tonight’s setup 😊 hopefully I go to bed at a reasonable time. I still have TWO lab reports to finish though.

I thought my math homework was going to be chill because it was just two problems but tell me why I open it and it’s part a-p 😭

Messy notes are so nice to make! The diagrams just hit different. Reading back through it is a pain though.

I love aesthetic notes but its not realistic for a lot of people. If it is for you, that is amazing! But this is an appreciation post for messy/near-unreadable notes, notes that still work as notes and help you get good marks but don't look pretty "like they should"

(These are my revision notes for C7 Chemistry)

#1. NO MORE GUILT

Ever find yourself crashing out after a long day at school, sitting on your bed watching Netflix, and getting nothing done? It sounds horrible when I put it that way. Bed rotting, doom scrolling, whatever it is, it’s never a fun thing.

Here’s the thing though— it doesn’t have to feel that way.

There are two states that we can consider you to be in. Focus and Relaxation. The situation I described above is caught in between these two states. You want to be in a focus state, but you’re overwhelmed and stuck in your relaxation state. The opposite is also true. You try to get work done but catch yourself distracted, on your phone, instead. You are in a focus state, but you want to be in a relaxation state.

The number one change you can do to help your mental health is to choose a side.

When you are in your focus state, commit. You put your best effort in and keep your mind engaged in what you are working on. No distractions. This is going to help you get so much more work done in a shorter period of time. As you practice this, you are going to realize that when you are in your focus state, distractions are less enticing and you will be able to maintain it for longer.

Disclaimer: if you have to tell yourself to “lock in” you aren’t doing it right. Forcing yourself into a focus state is never going to work, it's just going to lead to that same, tiring, useless feeling.

To actually decompress and feel happier, you can’t have second thoughts in your relaxation. Set a timer if you have to, but you need to let yourself enjoy whatever you are doing. Imagine this: after a long hard day, you treat yourself by getting some popcorn, bundle yourself up in blankets, dim the lights, and get to watch the movie that’s been on your bucket list for the past week. So much better than what we started with, right? The cycle of guilt relaxation starts with wanting to decompress but feeling guilty the whole time. You don’t rest and aren’t happy because all you’ve been thinking about is “I have to get work done.” Instead, you get more tired, and you need to continue laying around or scrolling on your phone.

You don’t have to change your entire routine— just be more mindful about which state you are in and how you can take advantage of that.

@goredchanel sure! Planning, practice, and time management are probably the most important things.

We didn't really come in with a plan and had to spend a lot of time figuring out what we were going to do, how each of the pieces fit together, and how to get the code working across files. I was also not familiar with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, and since we decided on building a website... it took a long time to learn how anything even worked.

Also practicing I think is just overall helpful. Even if it's just smaller projects, it helps build up to making that bigger hack. Making small apps/games/websites, even if they aren’t that useful can help keep your skills up to date. And then when the hackathon comes along, you can do a more practical project. For learning python and java from the very beginning I like codingbat, but if you’re already familiar, it might be too slow.

Time management is also important to keep track of. We didn't have this issue, but I think it was pretty common in the groups.

Devpost has a "Beginner-Friendly" tag for more hackathons, so those are hopefully less intimidating. Anyways, I hope that helps 😊

my first 24 hour hackathon!

NEVER AGAIN in my life am I building a website from scratch 😭 it’s torture. if only my dumb self knew that frameworks existed…

lazed tf out of sunday

physics feels so inaccessible.

like what do you mean the only information on this topic is a power point presentation from ten years ago with only half of the information on it?

or you tell me there's three ways to download the software i need for the calculations, but only one of the ways actually works and you don't even tell me how to do it!!!

never mind the sheer amount of prerequisites. i never struggled with math too much, but i also never took the opportunity to skip a level in math. when i was starting out, you can't do anything without trig. so then i went and learned trig on my own, but then i needed matrices. so i went and i learned matrices and vectors on my own, but now i need calculus. and holy shit is there a lot of stuff within calculus.

half the important papers are hidden behind paywalls and the diagrams are so confusing they take me forever to figure out. maybe i'm just inexperienced, but isn't the whole point of diagrams for the information to be more accessible?????

i might be wrong since i'm young and inexperienced, but it seems as if there's this tone of exclusivity in physics. why is it so hard to find mentors, and when i do, they have such trouble believing in me? i might be young, but i can still understand and help with something. why would you ignore all my emails and just tell me to take the easy way out? i'm in it for the long run.

07/02/25 day 32/100

Goals —

Physics (Anything).

Yeah, only physics. 🐧