It’s Been A Little Over Two Years Since I Took A Picture Of Ursa Major While Flying. It Was A Surreal

Star Trails taken by Rob on February 24 2024

Star trails are photographs taken over long exposures, where the rotation of the Earth causes the stars to appear as arcs in the sky instead of points. The Earth rotates around its axis every 23 hours and 56 minutes.

Typically, star trails are focused on Polaris in the northern hemisphere, but I found this photo unique because it opted for a different composition. It also really highlights how dense the sky is with stars.

It begs the question, why isn't the sky infinitely bright with infinite stars? This is actually the observation that helped cosmologists find theories for the age of the universe. For a young universe, not enough time has passed for the light from incredibly distant stars to reach us, leading to the dark sky we see when we look up at night.

RANT APPROACHING!!!! continue at your own risk ⚠️

OH MY GOD I CANNOT put into WORDS how UNEXPECTED this is. and your like… what? but an 87 isn’t even that bad???

look, i’ve been writing narrative and fiction since i could speak. i don’t normally ask for feedback, so maybe that’s a point of growth but oh well. i write multiple short stories every month and write a page of narrative in my journal EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

in school, we typically only write literary analysis or argumentative or like DBQ style. but i switched to a writing class this semester and my teacher told us to write a mock common app essay.

YOUD THINK that with ALL the narrative writing i’ve done and ALLL the summer program apps i’ve had to write in the past years, THIS WOULD BE A PIECE OF CAKE.

i will be honest, i did struggle with this a bit, but by the time we got to the peer review stage, my classmates jaws DROPPED and they were like ITS SO GOOD (not to be egotistic but just to give you some context for the level of writing i thought i had)

so IMAGINE MY FACE WHEN I SEE THIS. NO JOKE this is the LOWEST essay grade i’ve gotten in my ENTIRE academic career in the past EIGHT YEARS (i’m in high school btw)

and i loon at my class and im like no way im in the middle of the pack. like what about the kid who wrote about being a capitalist overlord in minecraft? or the basic one that talks about a sports injury??? and these are the people with brain cells. like what about the people that posted themselves buying alcohol for a party while they are underage onto insta??? like cmon no way their essays got perfect grades

and for reference she’s not that harsh a grader. my teacher is the most chill person. she hands out candy and actually got me to participate in class and doesn’t even care if you get your work done.

and so i check my document to see what feedback she left me. no joke the only comments are small grammar mistakes, some flow issues that she pointed out, and suggestions to elaborate. YOURE TELLING ME that the only thing wrong with my essay is that YOU WANTED MORE????? like make it make sense

worse thing is that i was planning to have her write my letter of recommendation, so at least i have an excuse to go talk to her??? but like i don’t want to be one of her B level writers

at one point the only thing i can imagine that was wrong with it was that it could be TOO creative or TOO emotional. so much for wanting to go outside the box and actually improve myself as a writer….

maybe i’m wrong but it feels kind of like an issue just with school in general. like maybe my school especially, since people are just obsessed with grades teachers expect the bare minimum, cookie cutter assignments. they don’t want you to expand on your thinking and it only matters if it’s going to be on test.

whatever. i’ll probably update the situation when i talk to my english teacher. thanks for listening to my minuscule problems 💕

target haul!! i went to go grab two notebooks (one for physics and one for math) i normally just use one for the entire year, but this time i’ve already run out of pages in one semester 😳

my computer science teacher says f the trees (his words not mine) and that you should use the paper to do your work and not try to compress it super small. a little extreme, but the point is, don’t be shy to take up space with your notes.

i went for a walk later this evening to decompress and it was so pretty— prepare for more sky pics because i will be going outside more often after today.

- final review physics 2

- ap frq practice

i failed one of the frqs which was pretty disappointing. focusing on the positive, i now know what i need to practice before my final tomorrow!

AAAAAAHHHH I HAVE A MATH TEST TMRW

Normally, I’m not so stressed, but I missed class this week (I was skipping shame on me 😭) and I have no clue what’s going on… Me and the math teacher are besties because he’s the coach of the golf team, so I’m scared of disappointing him with my bad test scores.

I also had a long lab in chem this week. It’s really sad because we got bad results even though we ran our trial for over and hour lol. I think it’s my lab partner’s fault because he keeps on putting his crusty fingers all over the cuvettes which is messing up the spectrophotometer. Hopefully he actually writes his part so it’s not another repeat of last year.

- Practice midterms for matrices

- Grade practice midterms

- Write lab report

- Debug binary system simulation

- Work on astro research paper

- Work on program applications

- Finish new deal research

- Finish college assessment

- Email people back 😬

Don’t ask me why we have a midterm in January… I have no clue.

I over-explain, yes.

So,

I was going through the communities option here because somehow too many computer science memes have been coming up on my feeds in Instagram and Pinterest. So, I was like- huh, let's see what Tumblr has!

I typed programming, well nothing came up so I tried coding. Again nothing. I tried programmer, coder, cs, computer science, comp, hack, hacking, hackers, nerd, geek etc etc but nothing came up.

But oh, I did find many people posting stuffs about coding and computer science. So why aren't these people united- Surely, there's Discord (I'm not on it and have no intention of opening an account there any sooner) for that but still what about people like me? (who already have too many apps just lying around unused and sometimes overused)

So,

I am thinking about opening a Tumblr Community for all the people who laugh at computer science memes even after it's the only thing they love to do- (referring to people who have a thing for computer science, yes)

(The options are direct because I've finished my daily quota of humor)

Also, I might end up naming the community Geeks, so yeah- think about a name please. Thank you.

Tagging some awesome people: @deletedg1rl @transiently-translucent @viridiangreennn @bagalois @sariel-studies-stuff @selenophhile @teaisstudying @bartholomewthestudyduck @swars-is-a-curse @shinaaposts @chu-diaries @stressed-burrito @straaaa @studyblr-perhaps @ramblingsfromthytruly @notyourtypicalfool @iwillsurvivecollege @moonlight-n-moondust @dormienscattus @instantsaladbouquet @minmin-vs-physics @jasminejava @lady-knight-inspo @ashs-nerd-den @ashs-reverie @losergfdotcom @sitamahalakshmicore @finisconoratopus @nelyastudies @reallynotmemoi @study-beee @andreainlove @whalelotofstudy @superlocrians @spcwtchstdy @lovesickd0ll @hopelittledreamer @aristudiess @yarensdiary @j-juno @sariel-studies-stuff @sirenkacode @sleep-deprived-music-gremlin @geniejeans @goose-the-corvid @itsliterallyjustme @stemstudyblog @aethereallynephilim @stem-diaries @dadoorman

Tag more people please!

47/100 days of productivity!

I need to have a difficult conversation today... scared but let's see...change is always scary

to-do: 20.1.25

Morning yoga session

book _the western intellectual tradition

Textbook session_2P

Matlab _1P

Class_2P

call home

Journal_ mental health check

Digital Declutter challenge

Today was not a good day for me unfortunately!

I think I’m emotionally exhausted! I’ll be taking a break soon u guys ! My eyes won’t literally stop twitching from stress..

there's always all these trackers and calendars online that are supposed to "increase your productivity" "help you be more efficient" blah blah blah

sometimes you just got to write it down on a piece of paper and take it one step at a time.

i dont know if this is just the monkey brain inside of me but after a couple weeks of trying a new planning or scheduling hack, it just stops working. i feel like it's really difficult to just sit down and get stuff done especially at the times i dictate it.

i just want to go with the flow

i actually got out of bed and did some work 😳 total 90 mins so far. next on my to-do list is emails and suddenly i want to crawl back into the darkness

in my academic weapon era ✍️

#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.