Video Essays That Make Me Go "oh, So You're Like Smart Smart"

How to strengthen your brain outside of school:

Maybe you’re not in school anymore, or you’re taking a gap year to save for school and you’re worried about keeping your brain fast and not getting too lazy. Well, here are a few helpful ways to make sure that you keep thinking:

Read books daily. Always have a book on the go. Reading keeps your brain active and it’s a cathartic activity. If you’re feeling up to it, read self-improvement books, or informative books.

Watch Ted Talks. Not only are these videos filled with so much great information, they are also inspiring.

Think about where you want to be in the future and start preparing for that. If this means that you need to spend hours of your life prepping the perfect resume so you can get a job or internship that takes you a step closer, then so be it. If you want to start your own business I’d highly recommend that you research the hell out of entrepreneurship. 

Exercise. Exercise is important for the brain. It also keeps you happy, which in turn keeps you motivated.

Expand your vocabulary. Write down the words you don’t know in books and look them up, keep them on flashcards and memorize them. Big vocabularies are so important and they do come in handy.

Learn a new language. You can do this for free on apps like Duolingo or you can actually go and take courses somewhere. This could help you so much if you plan on doing University abroad or even getting a job there.

Watch documentaries. Netflix can currently teach you about the Vietnam war, World War II, the Earth, the global food trade etc. Learn. 

Watch the news, listen to it or read about it. It’s important that we know what’s happening right now and memes can distract us, but try to be informed. Maybe you can make a difference.

Learn a new skill. It’s time to learn something you’ve always wanted to, whether it’s cooking, sewing, art, photography, yoga, mechanics etc. Teach yourself.

Do online classes to boost your grades for University. 

Do online classes because you’re curious. Don’t stifle your curiosity. Curiosity is an asset.

Challenge yourself to do one productive thing every day. Don’t let yourself go to bed without mental stimulation for the day.

(by natalie moonbeam)

idk thinking about how sometimes you have to show up for people you aren't that close to, because sometimes you're just the person who's there. sometimes you invite a new friend to a party and end up having to sit with them through a panic attack. sometimes you run into an acquaintance on their worst day and they need to talk about what happened. sometimes someone is crying in a stairwell and you're the only one around to ask if they're okay. and none of this is "trauma dumping" or whatever the fuck it's just being there for people because you're the one in the room with them.

“Her [Jane Austen’s] genius began with the recognition that such lives as hers were very eventful indeed — that every life is eventful, if only you know how to look at it. She did not think that her existence was quiet or trivial or boring; she thought it was delightful and enthralling, and she wanted us to see that our own are, too. She understood that what fills our days should fill our hearts, and what fills our hearts should fill our novels.”

— A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz. (via halfagony-halfhope)

99 legal sites to download literature

The Classics

Browse works by Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and other famous authors here.

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

Textbooks

If you don’t absolutely need to pay for your textbooks, save yourself a few hundred dollars by reviewing these sites.

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

Keep reading

thinking about anastasia trusova paintings again

Once I stop procrastinating and starts reading 365 pages books in two days again then it's all over for everyone.

A display from a smalltown second hand bookstore. What has been found in books.

i literally love the rain so much when cars slow down and people hide in the stores and restaurants or bus stops with strangers or when they run home with plastic bags on their head or when groups of people share one umbrella i love you peace love even light and happiness on planet earth truly

my favorite love language is trying, actually