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narrator-scio-story · 6 years

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I find this really funny because when I was little my hardworking, professional, scientific-career-woman mum had a knitting book called Stitch 'n Bitch and honestly I was so small I didn't even know what the word bitch meant so that knitting book, a pretty feminist knitting book I think although I haven't read it myself, that book is my oldest association with that word. Knitting is awesome and powerful and my question is not why women would knit in an equal, modern society but why men wouldn't?! Isn't it just a useful life skill?!

Inexplicably annoyed by men writing about knitting!

#knitting #feminism #girls in stem

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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I Am No Better Than Previous Captains

Last year when I was not an officer of Science Club, just a regular Science Olympiad team member, I spent all this time thinking about how things could be run better.

Idk how much that is to my credit but it’s the truth. Like, it probably was petty, but there were a lot of aspects of how tryouts were run, how much support was given to the new people, the amount of effort that seemed to be put in, the approachability of the club which I disagreed with. I wanted to be Science Olympiad president this year, because I thought not only was Science Olympiad something I loved so much, but Science Olympiad was where all the people were, where the decisions got made, where there was a possibility of me making a difference.

Everyone persuaded me that I didn’t need to be Science Olympiad president to make a difference, that all the club officers worked together to make decisions and that as long as I had an officer position, that was what mattered. If I just did that I would be about to contribute to the club as much as I could possibly want. That sounded great, I believed them, I did it by becoming the captain of a “lesser” competition, I’m enthusiastic about it, everything seems great, I’m helping to make decisions.

I got what I wanted, didn’t I? I should be achieving everything I wanted to.

But now it’s my turn to be a high school senior. I feel so nostalgic for so many things. One of last year’s senior officers was visiting on fall break last Thursday, another came to visit the school today, I missed them so much and I forgive any mistakes they made trying to lead our team to success - I mean, they succeeded, so… I just miss them, I don’t mind if they were imperfect because now they’re gone and…

Plus I’ve really discovered how much work it is, to be a person and a Science Olympiad captain at the same time. I am way behind where I want to be in my college apps. Like, I worked on them all summer, and now the deadlines are coming up and I’m not half done. I really haven’t studied for Science Olympiad the way I probably should, my homework situation is more or less a mess, I keep staying up way too late and not even for any good reason. Our SciOly invites aren’t paid for, we don’t have tests for all of the test exchanges set up, I’m not sure anybody is agreed on the dates for tryouts, recap emails always go out nearer to the date of the next meeting than of the previous meeting.

And yet some of the official Science Olympiad officers have said to me, wow, you do so much for Science Olympiad. So you know what, I am trying. It’s hard, and not all the things that last year, I looked at the officers with scorn for - I haven’t managed to do all of them right.

But we’re trying. I think we have managed some improvements. In between college apps and homework and disagreements, we’ve gotten some things planned.

I panicked so much when it seemed like the other officers weren’t available to submit forms to register for invitationals. You know how I am - I’m sure that what I’ve done must be wrong, I always need somebody to reread what I’ve written, I struggle in ways that nobody sees after the fact.

If I’m going through all this maybe the previous officers did too. I will still try to improve things where I can but maybe my dreams of perfection aren’t practicable and that’s okay and I don’t blame last year’s officers, not any more, if they also couldn’t quite get there.

#science olympiad #scioly #tryouts #high school #college apps #class of 2018 #science club #club meeting #team captain

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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I really want to celebrate this book. Yes, the cover is really faded, because it’s an old freaking book. But I think this is just an amazing kids’ science book which has had a huge impact on me.

This book introduced me to the freaking Coriolis effect. Can we just think about how significant that is for a moment?!

Okay, I guess for a lot of people that might not be the biggest deal. But the Coriolis effect to me was so, so amazing. I asked years and years of science teachers if they could teach us about the Coriolis effect, after that short section I read in the Look-It-Up Book of the Earth. I more or less memorized the experiment it suggested, of putting a sheet of paper on a turntable and trying to draw a straight line at a steady pace as the turntable rotated the paper out from under your pencil.

I can visualise that experiment so, so well.

Even though I’ve never done it because I don’t have a turntable. I’m much to young. But oh, I love the idea of the experiment.

In 10th grade I was finally able to act on my adoration for the Coriolis effect during class, and I wrote an essay on how it was an application of vectors, and that’s a really sweet story which I tell very often. But at the moment I want to talk about the rest of this book.

The Coriolis effect is not the only wonderful thing this contains. It was the one I remembered for 7 years but looking back through it, I can see that hidden between the out of date facts, there are other wonderful earth science ideas I didn’t learn again for years, but which I’m so glad I had the opportunity to be excited about when I was young.

Isostasy. That’s a word I didn’t think I’d ever read or heard before, when I looked at the Dynamic Planet Tectonics rules when that topic rotated in for Science Olympiad in the fall of 2016. But yesterday as I skimmed through the Look-It-Up Book of the Earth, in the section about the crust or the interior of the earth, I don’t remember which, it included that word. It explained the way the crust floats on a semifluid layer, and moves up and down with weight. Its illustrations showed mountains with deep, deep crustal roots, even if it didn’t quite put into words what was going on, just assumed the image was comprehensible.

Drainage patterns. I didn’t know fuck shit about them when I decided to try out for hydrogeology, again in fall of 2016, because nobody was doing that event. Apparently I read about them all those years ago, and read about them in straightforward, yet not childish language.

Same with the International Geophysical Year (that one I did remember, actually, but it’s still super specific information nobody would normally bother to tell children about), and hogbacks and specific gravity. Seriously! Specific gravity! I mean, you have to be a pretty damn awesome author with a pretty damn high level of respect for young kids to think that if you explain the specific gravity of minerals to them, they will understand.

But some children’s science book author believed in kids, and I read their book and I believed in the Coriolis effect.

And I believed in me.

So even if this is just calling out to an uninterested internet, I wanted to celebrate this book which can probably take responsibility for not just my interest in the Coriolis effect, but indirectly a lot of the other science-related things I’ve done since, which I’m now so, so passionate about.

#earth science #science for kids #books #coriolis effect #oxford university #ucas #isostasy #science olympiad #girls in STEM

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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Ouch, I used to be one of those people who skipped Northanger Abbey.

I still don’t know if that’s, like, normal behavior, but I think the book is pretty different from her other works? Like if you’re reading Austen to make fun of social customs in the Regency period, Northanger Abbey is exactly right for you, but a lot of people read Jane Austen for the romance, and you don’t see the development of the connection between the characters as much in Northanger Abbey. After the first time I read it, I remembered the story as just this girl meets a guy once at a ball and is in love with him, and he marries her solely for her being in love with him.

I don’t think that is entirely the story, but even if it is, the best part about the book is really the snarkiness of the narrator; the general social commentary. I couldn’t appreciate that until I was a bit older, and had read and loved Lady Susan several times. I no longer think that Northanger Abbey deserves to be shunned but it’s definitely different, and I guess I can believe that you could love other Austen novels without understanding Northanger Abbey.

Mansfield Park is kind of different as well but it was actually my favorite the first time I read the books - it’s just so behaved. It does seem to have more movie adaptions, though, so perhaps it’s more popular?

Of course, I don’t know how common my opinions are, and I haven’t read or seen Austenland, so I still don’t know if that explains that quote.

O mighty Austen wise! I'm reading Austenland and stumbled upon this "Sure Jane had first read Pride and Prejudice when she was sixteen, read it a dozen times since, and read other Austen novels at least twice, except Northanger Abbey (of course)." Why is that? Northanger Abbey is my favourite, and everyone I know likes it. Is there a NA hating club I'm not aware of?

I’ve not read Austenland and I’ve heard some say the film is better, so maybe that was just an authorial aside to take a jab at her least-favourite novel? As far as I know there’s not a widespread sense of disdain for Northanger Abbey.

If there’s any common pet-hate among Austen lovers I’d say most folk tend to roll their eyes at Mansfield Park.

#jane austen #northanger abbey #austenland

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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Okay, first, I like this blog, so I’m sharing something from it so it will be visible to the world that I like this blog, and second, I share the ideas shown in this ask, and third, I am sure there are many more people who have felt like this or could feel like this but have been discouraged and I hope they can recover.

Tada, generally uplifting message but it’s true.

I really love your blog! I'm 14 and I really want to go into science. I'm personally interested in forensic toxicology and space (I know it's kinda weird). Along with McCoy from Star Trek and my mom who's a doctor, this blog is one of my inspirations. I hope that maybe one day I'll be a great female scientist that people online like you will talk about!

You are so sweet! I certainly hope so too!

#science #girls in STEM

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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Writing Science Olympiad Tests

If I’m not going to do the work I should be in terms of writing a novel about Science Olympiad, I should at least talk about my own experiences with Science Olympiad.

It’s still the beginning of the year, so at the moment, we’re still thinking about getting tests written, so we can trade the tests with other schools, so we can run tryouts and later have practices.

I am a bit fed up with the other team members already - even when it’s so early in the year - because some of them haven’t done their part of test writing. We don’t yet have a full set to trade, and I’ve had to make 2 tests for a couple of subjects so we can put them in captain’s tryouts.

Oh well, what can you do?

So by this point we’ve had our first meeting, but yeah, it’s all the behind the scenes stuff that’s really been concerning the officers. The tests I’ve written so far have been 1 thermodynamics test, 2 remote sensing tests, and 2 dynamic planet tests.

So there first test I wrote for each of those topics I spent quite a while on. My first dynamic planet and remote sensing tests, I actually wrote using last year’s rules rather than this year’s. I knew that not much would’ve changed between them, because the topics for each wouldn’t have changed. Dynamic planet is still about tectonics for the second year in a row, and remote sensing, it’s only in for 2 years at a time but when it is in they keep the same topics between the 2 years. So that was still climate change processes. Good for me, because that’s what I’m the best at!

So my first dynamic planet test I had multiple choice questions, matching, fill in the blank, short answer, and then questions with images or diagrams or whatever. Idk why I separated the last 2 sections, they probably could’ve gone together, but once I’d done that once it seemed automatic to do it on all the tests and now it’s just part of my formula or something.

Matching was one of the sections I found the easiest, because I could make part of it about vocab and just test a lot of basics that way, and then I made part of it about people and so got the history part of the rules out of the way.

Also, I deliberately included a female geologist in my matching about the history of plate tectonics. I felt I couldn’t do anything otherwise, it wasn’t fair.

Honestly, though, Inge Lehmann is pretty important. I don’t feel guilty about including her on the test, as though I only included her because she was female. I do wonder if perhaps we hear significantly less about her than about somebody who did something very similar - Andrija Mohorovicic, identified the boundary between the crust and the mantle, while Inge Lehmann discovered the inner core - because she was a woman, but I in no way feel as though asking people to know the discoverer of the inner core was too obscure or a stretch from the topic.

The other section I cared about a lot was the long answer or diagram or whatever you want to call it section, because there I was really trying to compensate for my past failures.

That was the point when I thought about how this test should be used for tryouts, because I was basically looking for a partner for myself.

I didn’t understand isostasy problems until halfway through last year, so there is a very long isostasy problem. I got questions about gravity anomalies wrong on last year’s Nats tests, so I’m testing this year’s students in the hope that won’t happen again. I don’t think I actually put any magnetic anomaly questions in that section, I guess because I couldn’t think of any questions that long to ask, but I did scatter several shorter questions about them throughout the test, because somehow last year I was confident they were on my notes sheet but they were not.

My process for the remote sensing test was similar, except that my remsen partner from last year helped judge my questions and suggest better questions and write the answer key - I know that they would’ve been willing to help me actually write the test as well but idk I just did a lot of the stuff before I was willing to share it with them.

Maybe I just don’t like sharing work. That’s not good, but it’s probably accurate.

My thermo test took a bit more effort because I know almost nothing about it yet so I was trying to learn as I worked. Also, that one I waited until this year’s rules manual came out, and then did it, so that want done until after the start of school.

I tried really hard to find a female scientist to put in that history section too, but I don’t know, I just couldn’t. I’ve gone through many articles on the history of thermodynamics, and tried everyone listed in the Wikipedia category of thermodynamicists, and been reduced to asking tumblr pages about women in science or just anyone I know who’s read about the topic.

It was such a depressing search.

Anyway, after that I wanted some tests to submit to a group exchange, we had to submit 2, so I remade a second remsen test by creating a duplicate of the one I had and then changing all the questions (it meant I already had a structure to build on, and could say, okay I need another question on that subject since I used that subject on the last test, idk I just felt like I could work faster like that). We submitted that, it got approved, and I also did the same thing with dynamic planet except I haven’t submitted that one. Reach of the second tests I managed in one afternoon of continual work, but there’s so much other work of classes and stuff I skipped.

And college apps, which make me miserable at the moment, I don’t know why.

Am I acting too much like everything is my responsibility? I keep trying to do stuff for Science Club because it feels like if I don’t, it doesn’t get done, and yet I make mistakes when I do things, and that’s just your dose of crazy self-doubt for today, and really I love SciOly very much even when it stresses me out, that’s why I do it.

#science olympiad #scioly #dynamic planet #remote sensing #thermo #plate tectonics #tryouts

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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My mum sent me a link to this a few days ago and I ran around to all my friends from Science Olympiad who are girls showing it to them, emphasizing that it's funded by Cards Against Humanity because that's actually something we've been thinking about for scioly a lot. (Imagine having a scioly-themed deck! Wouldn't that be awesome? So my friends and I started listing ideas for it.)

If I get time, I will 100% make a video about the Coriolis effect, my ~favorite thing~! For the moment, though, I'm just trying to write my UCAS application personal statement (also about the Coriolis effect lol), and all the other essays I have to do.

Open to high school seniors and undergraduates planning to attend or already attending a university in the United States! (You do NOT need to be a US citizen.)

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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So About Northanger Abbey

In order to understand the story of my recent reread of Northanger Abbey you need to understand my overall history with Jane Austen.

It’s a long history, really.

I got a nook back when I was 12 and I’m pretty sure Pride and Prejudice was already on it then. One of the Barnes & Noble classics series versions, with the fancy introductions and stuff. Either it came with the nook or my mum bought it on her account before adding my device to her account, but either way, it was there and I read it.

I might’ve read Sense and Sensibility in the same format, too, despite joking with a friend about how that one in the description explicitly called it a romance novel and ew we wanted nothing to do with it. But not long after - definitely before I was 13 - I realised I didn’t need the ~$4 versions of each one separately, when I could just buy the complete works of Jane Austen for ~$12. So I did, and I read them all.

And then before I turned 14, my 8th grade school year had just started and I decided I wanted to try to reread all the Jane Austen novels while still 13. I managed the first 4 in the order my copy went, and then I hit Northanger Abbey. I kept reading through it, though, as much as I could - I love that quote about how woman is fine for her own enjoyment alone, although I could hardly stand everything I had to get through before hitting it, it really didn’t seem worth it.

But it was so tedious, and I realised that with such little time left before my next birthday, if I was to get through Persuasion I would just have to give up on Northanger Abbey.

And I had enjoyed every reread prior to that one. So it seemed obvious that that one wasn’t worth rereading.

After having had to struggle to get even halfway through Northanger Abbey that year, I didn’t try reading it at all the next summer. Nor when I was 15, nor while 16. I read Sense and Sensibility, followed by Pride and Prejudice, followed by Mansfield Park, followed by Emma, went to the table of contents and skipped Northanger Abbey to get to the beginning of Persuasion, and read Persuasion. Several years I also read Lady Susan; one year I read Love and Friendship. But I didn’t even try Northanger Abbey again. I was convinced I hated that one.

The plot was stupid. The main character fell in love with this guy after meeting him once. And then he only loved her back because he knew she liked him.

First, that was all I remembered, by the end of several years. I knew that the beginning was a girl going to Bath and being introduced to a guy at a party and liking him a lot. And I knew that the ending was the guy marrying the girl, because he knew she liked him.

I might’ve also remembered that there was a girl the main character was friends with who was a jerk, who had a horrible brother, but that wasn’t at all likely to recommend the book to me either.

But more importantly, that seemed really stupid to me. I knew in theory, at least by the time I was 15, that it was a satire. But that just didn’t sound like an interesting plot. People parading up and down the room in Bath was not something I could relate to. And really, I read Jane Austen because it makes me cry when the characters get happy endings. This book’s ending I didn’t feel invested in at all.

So this year, after whizzing through Mansfield Park and Emma, having started in the wrong place in the list because of Mansfield Park being on the AP Lit reading list, I hit Northanger Abbey and figured I needed to try it again.

Lady Susan - let along Love and Friendship - is a satire. And I love that! I find it hilarious! Northanger Abbey is the same thing in a longer form, so I figured I ought to just try it. Try it again. Make sure I got through it and then judged it.

Right from the beginning I felt that whether or not the story was worthwhile, the language... I was really missing out by not reading those brilliant sentences every year. While I still in some ways disliked the characters, I adored the narrator. The narrator is just wickedly brilliant. So sassy. Perfectly expressed.

And I think that’s how I still feel about the book. It was funny, on average, and I don’t intend to pointedly ignore it, as a deliberate insult that it is not like the other Austen novels, in future years - it isn’t bad enough to do that - although perhaps if it weren’t by Jane Austen, and entwined in how I think about her literature as a whole, I might not bother rereading it quite so often. But Jane Austen is just overall better if you’re comparing her works against each other and pulling out trends and understanding the context.

But although I may not appreciate that book as a whole as much as some people do, wow I now love the individual sentences. They’re now nicely highlighted quotes which I will flip through frequently.

Jane Austen writes amazing stories in a lot of her other books, but in Northanger Abbey she instead has words worth reading.

#northanger abbey #jane austen #nook #barnes and noble

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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School Has Literally Started?

Of course I planned to do work on my novel in the days between arriving back in New Jersey and the start of school.

Well, all that time, and then some, is gone, and nope, I haven’t done any work on it.

Some of what I’ve done has been productive, I suppose: before school started, I did my chemistry summer homework assignment. (I’d already done the reading, but I hadn’t had paper, so that was my excuse to stop after that.) It took a while to get to the first chapter’s problems, I started with the second and third chapters (we were supposed to do the first three chapters) because the problem pages for the first chapter were literally missing.

Also the answers for the first 3 chapters at the end of the book.

I have the teacher with firmer expectations, though, so I knew I couldn’t get away with just saying those questions weren’t in my textbook with her. I ended up using an online version of the textbook that somebody sent me.

APUSH I also did the writing for at the last minute yet, although I did do some of it in a notebook back in Colorado, so for the first half I just needed to type it into the computer and the rest I actually had to come up with paragraphs on the chapters.

Ew.

Plus, I am finally back in the same location as my French horn! My baby! My Licorne! (That’s its name. It’s a singular horn, and it’s a French one. It was a very good pun, okay? And it sounds pretty too.) My first day of horn practice was actually primarily cleaning the horn - the valves really wouldn’t move when I first got it out, and it’s still not even a year old - but I got everything oiled, all my mouth pieces cleaned, etc and since my lips seem to have recovered from the scales I forced on them after months of no buzzing at all, I’ve been practicing at least every other day. Tomorrow, 9/11, will be the first Monday of school although the 4th day, and... seating auditions. So I’m glad I’ve made so much progress already. I think I’m going to manage to work harder on my horn this year, because last year I really didn’t play as well as I should have and I really regret that decision.

We also cleaned the bathroom, put away stuff in the garden, whatever. Unpacking, of course, that was the first day. But really the best thing that’s happened lately was probably my trip to Rutgers on Sunday.

I now know how to play the board games Seven Wonders and Ticket to Ride. My boyfriend’s suitemate/neighbor really has a good selection of board games. I also got to try out another Rutgers dining hall - that’s 4 now, I don’t know if I even have any left? My parents told me I had to be home from Rutgers by 10, of course I ended up catching the train that reached our town’s train station at 10:10 because I didn’t plan for the Rutgers bus system, and then my train was slightly late, but yeah. I did run into an old friend who goes to another high school at our train station, though (of course they offered to drive me home because it was 10 at night but I refused, that’s honestly the calmest time to be walking around, so long as you’re in a safe area, right?)

And then the first week of school. I’m lucky, really, I have one friend who’s in practically all of my classes, somebody who I’m close to from Science Club going back years. None of my teachers have put in any grades yet although some of them have collected assignments, but I guess we’ll just see how the year goes from here on.

I really have nothing to say about this weekend, I didn’t do much.

I would tell you about my rediscovery of Northanger Abbey earlier this week, realising there’s actually no reason to hate it, but... I’ll save that for a separate post. I just want to get this one done.

#school #new jersey #textbook #chemistry #apush #rutgers #french horn #board games

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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Yet another reminder that I really need to get back to scio-is-a-story, I've done quite a bit of work on Science Olympiad stuff this summer so maybe I'll have some ideas for how to add to the missing spaces in the story? Waiting to do anything until school starts I know means I won't have enough time but I can't help it I want a desktop computer, a proper desktop with a wide monitor on a proper desk to write at.

#writing #scio-is-a-story #novel #science olympiad #scioly #school

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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I'm 17 and haven't started learning to drive yet because I'm sure I'd fuck something up very badly but it's become this big point of contention with literally everyone >.<

Now that I’m older than 16, 16 seems entirely too young to handle the responsibilities of driving.

#driving #teenagers #responsibility

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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I'm really enjoying reading so many opinions from other people about these novels I love so much, it's also really making me consider taking about these during AP lit rather than Beloved. It is so wonderful to hear other people's opinions on it when you're so used to hearing only your own!

I always read the novels on my e-reader, and through the years, I've highlighted many of the vocab words (for educational purposes lol), the cleverest lines (for quoting at people in real life), and the points at which the romance progresses (in case of real life heartbreak oops). Really, at this point I could slip from highlighted phrase to highlighted phrase and still read everything in which the romantic plots happen.

But this year when I read Mansfield Park, I found myself highlighting sections not working Edmund but with Crawford. With Crawford, while he was trying to attach Fanny. Yes, he's a dick, but he's also a dick who for a decent part of the time was noticing the needs of am otherwise ignored girl. He helped everyone notice her value, because to some degree he appreciated it - even more admirable when he couldn't have from his own character understood it.

Of course once Crawford and Maria go off together we know there's no good ending unless Fanny gets Edmund. But there's definitely a time in there where you can imagine multiple happy couples rather than one.

I just keep thinking about the parallels between the novels in terms of characters and their roles (I think they are mentioned in the post above, but I had somewhat of my own take on them). Pride & Prejudice - the one we always compare everything to, of course - involves a woman who first likes the scoundrel and then grows to appreciate the deserving man. So does Sense & Sensibility, although it's not the main character going through that journey. Even Emma has a degree of that, when she thinks she loves Frank Churchill, even though she later decides that wasn't really the case. In contrast, in Persuasion and Mansfield Park (maybe Northanger Abbey? I don't remember it because I haven't reread it, it wasn't my thing I guess), you have a female character in love the entire time with a good man and just waiting to have him. It would be nice to be told in at least one of them that there's not only one right man for you. That despite being in love with a good person for such a long time, good people as well as Mr Elton and Mr Collins can marry somebody who was not the first person they wanted to marry, and that their second choice can be good even if their first choice wasn't a crook.

I keep thinking about how I am not really romantic enough to be such a Janeite as I am and I guess this shows it again. I worship these stories but I want one that tells me that not only can I fix my mistakes (like Persuasion does) but I can move on from them.

Guess I'll just have to dream my own alternate endings. But of course I do that anyway.

I am so glad I found this part of tumblr which has other opinions to get my thinking ahhhh

You said: "Mansfield Park is probably the bleakest of Austen novels, and I particularly wished a very specific thing had turned out differently, even though I get why it didn’t, but to me it is a great book" I really want to know what thing you're talking about! Though I have some ideas of course.. Please explain yourself, I am keen to listen :)

Hi anon! I’m glad you’re interested in listening what I have to say.

For those of you who haven’t read Mansfield Park yet and don’t want spoilers, I advise you not to read the rest of this post.

So, what I wished that had turned out differently was Henry Crawford’s story. I really hoped for the reformation of his character. I liked how he went from just wanting to mess with Fanny to genuinely falling in love with her and having, to some extent, transformed. Of course, old habits die hard, and his old ways were stronger than the new conduct he had adopted in his pursuit of Fanny’s affections.

While Austen’s novels aren’t romantic stories, even though romance plays a part in them, Mansfield Park is the least romantic of all of her books. I think that this is probably why so many people dislike it. As I said, this is the bleakest of her novels, the realism of it is quite disconcerting, and almost no one is transformed in the process, at least not in the same manner that, say, Marianne Dashwood or Elizabeth Bennet. This isn’t a criticism of Austen’s writing, quite the contrary. Here she focuses on the importance of constancy and integrity. By this I don’t mean that the characters in Mansfield Parkare flat, because they are not. It’s not that Fanny doesn’t evolve, it’s just that her development is rooted in her constancy and integrity.

I think it’s important to remember that Austen wrote Mansfield Park upon finishing Pride and Prejudice, something that I take as her will to explore different facets of the human condition. And I believe this is connected to her approach towards Henry Crawford.

Of the gallery of rakes written by Austen - Sense and Sensibility’s Willoughby, Pride and Prejudice’s Wickham, Mansfield Park’s Crawford, Persuasion’s Mr. Elliot, and Frank Churchill, Emma’s much lighter version of the trope -, Henry Crawford is the only one I saw myself rooting for. He was the only one I thought that would turn into someone actually good. But then, he just didn’t. He couldn’t really bring himself to change. Contrasting his journey to Darcy’s, even though they pertain to different character tropes and have a very different inner character, shows us that Darcy took his change much closer to his heart.

Fanny’s integrity is deeply rooted in her, and she won’t bend it to the fickle ways of the world. While this is praise worthy, Henry Crawford’s fall into his old habits, which are the total opposite of Fanny’s, is condemnable. The “constancy” of his dissolute behaviour has the exact opposite effect to that of Fanny’s constancy. One must know when it’s necessary to stay the same and when it’s necessary to transform.

That’s why I understand why Henry Crawford fell, being unable to complete the reformation of his character. However, I would have liked very much to see him truly change. As I said before, Austen’s novels aren’t about who the heroine gets to marry in the end, but I’d rather see Fanny paired up with a transformed Henry Crawford than to Edmund Bertram. Henry proposed a challenge to her, not because of his dubious morals, of course, but his quick mind and general disposition would be far more beneficial to her, had he reformed, than a life lived with Edmund. To me, Edmund was never worthy of Fanny. His infatuation with Mary Crawford really speaks against him, and not because Fanny had always been in love with him, but because it shows he didn’t really have a sharp mind. Besides, Henry’s transformation would be inherently connected to who Fanny is, to her morals and to her conduct, providing an interesting take on the theme of the novel (the novel’s narrator even speculates that had he been more patient, Fanny would most likely have accepted him).

I understand Austen’s motives and wishes with the writing of Mansfield Park, but I would have loved to see how she would have conducted Henry’s reformation and the dynamics this would have brought to the narrative.

Do you care to share your thoughts, anon? ;)

#mansfield park #jane austen #romance

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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Hahahaha I basically never watch TV but I was in a hotel and we ended up watching this and it was great hahahaha

Now I want that Emma quote, "Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do".

But seriously I feel like I've tried hitting climate change deniers with all sorts of different arguments that explain why they're wrong and they simply ignore them. I had a math teacher - a math teacher! - in middle school who simply said regardless of the evidence, climate change wasn't real because God wouldn't allow us to do that to ourselves and the scientists were falling the data to get grant funding. It infuriated me. Wasn't there some news article recently about how more educated people get more adamantly anti climate change because they know how to pick and choose among facts?

8.28.17

#science #neil degrasse tyson #television #climate change #sense #emma

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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Let's Just Have Some Old-Fashioned Fangirling Over Jane Austen

I could call this post "What's Happening 8/29", like I've been doing for a while now.

But seriously, this blog has now evolved from providing short snippets of context about my own experiences in Science Olympiad to explain what I write about in the novel, to begging excuses for why I haven't revised anymore of the novel (news flash - I have no excuse), to now being the primary purpose of my writing.

This is my personal blog explaining the progress of my life.

So it doesn't really make sense to simply name every blog post to show that it's an update on my life from the date it's posted. I want to really explain what I'm going to be writing about in the title, don't I?

So this is a blog post about Jane Austen.

Of course I don't need an excuse to talk about Jane Austen. Why would I need an excuse, how could you ask that?

We've been in the process, the past couple of days, of driving back east after Colorado, in time for school to start. The day before we left I just about managed to finish reading Toni Morrison's Beloved. That was a part of the book pair I'd chosen for my summer reading for AP lit, so I insisted on rereading it in full even though I already read it back in November of 2015 (I know that because I can remember reading it before a certain concert, but whatever, the point is it was a while ago and I needed a refresher). Both the partner book for Beloved and the partner book for Mansfield Park were books I'd bought new on the book this summer and read on the overnight flight to the UK in July, so those were basically the two pairs of books I was choosing between.

Now, I know I'm getting out of order in my history, but I have a confession to make.

A rather embarrassing confession. I can't imagine how my girlfriend would react if she knew.

Not only have I not read Northanger Abbey since 8th grade, and not read Northanger Abbey in its entirety since 6th or 7th grade (aka the first time I read it! Yeek!), but last summer I actually didn't get through all the other Jane Austen novels.

Between my phone and my e-reader, travelling and staying in different people's houses, all the random bookmarks and quotations in different places in the books which I turn to frequently for comfort or to prove a point, I don't actually remember anymore how far I got. So we could say it's very possible I hadn't read Mansfield Park in 2 years.

How had I been getting my necessary fix of Austen instead? Well... Um... Oops... Er... Adaptions?!

Not to mention reading about the 200th anniversary of her death in news stories, but that should've only reminded me of what I was missing. Somehow I was getting the crying-at-happy-endings stuff from adaptions.

So you've heard about all the Netflix adaptions I watched in the UK, I think. And on the British Airways flight back to the US I watched the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice. My sister was shocked that I hadn't seen it before, she claims it's her favorite and she probably hasn't read the book not to mention she couldn't sit through the whole Jennifer Ehle one with me when I rented it on disc years ago. But there you go. I've seen it now, and it wasn't what finally convinced me to do my duty by the novels.

I was only at home, my own house, my own town, for a couple of days, but I did manage to invite my girlfriend to come watch the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma with me one of those days. (Why that one? Because it was the one that was streaming on Netflix. Clueless seems to have been taken off. Not to mention the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma was an Austen movie I hadn't seen before, and yet had tolerable reviews.)

I told her we could judge it's accuracy of the books together. She admitted to me that she'd never actually finished reading Emma because the main character annoyed her so much.

Then after we'd agreed to our plans anyway, she got sick and told me she couldn't come. So I flew out the next day without seeing her, but with it still downloaded within Netflix on my phone.

And eventually in Colorado, one bored afternoon, I have in and watched it on my own. And cried at Mr Knightley's confession of love at the end even though I didn't particularly approve the wording of it. Everything.

Then soon another bored afternoon in Colorado, another afternoon I didn't fancy doing anything productive, I scrolled aimlessly through YouTube and I suppose due to my old (8th grade-era) subscription to the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, found Emma Approved.

I watched as much as I could between my late afternoon discovery and going out to dinner that night. (Actually only 16 or 17 episodes?)

I woke up early the next morning - I couldn't stop thinking about it - and couldn't wait for my parents to be out of the house (for some reason I was determined not to watch it in front of them). Once they left, I devoted about the entire rest of the productive day to watching it, putting off until 9 and then 10 getting out of my pyjamas and showering, returning to the show immediately after, failing to put it down while I ate a breakfast of very old leftovers because anything else was too much distraction, forcing myself to stop for the few minutes I knew that I really, really, really needed to devote to my summer reading in my textbooks for APUSH and AP chem.

I finished the YouTube series quite early in the afternoon and, desperate for more, watched all the Q&A's and Frank and Jane's and even some behind the scenes videos. I had somehow become just so invested in those characters.

And then that night I really couldn't sleep. I must've gotten into bed at a normal time, maybe 10 pm, but I can remember checking my watch at 1 am and feeling not at all sleepy. All because I kept playing through the events of the show in my head. Imagining additional scenarios with Emma and Alex. Thinking about what those characters must have felt.

And in that, above in watching Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma, was the source of my guilt about not rereading Austen recently. I flew through Beloved, which I really did intend to use for my AP lit book, not so much because I'd already read it as because there was something else wonderful which I'd already read waiting for me as soon as I was done. Beloved made me emotional in its way but I was waiting for Mansfield Park, that beautiful home, what had been my favorite of all love stories the first time I read it even if I've since grown to care about others.

So, we spent the last couple of days driving east across Middle American states I've never visited before, me not doing any of the driving because I can't drive, and I've been busy with two of my favorite activities of all time: reading Jane Austen and photographing went turbines.

I got through all of Mansfield Park between yesterday's drive and this morning's, and although I normally go Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, I allowed myself to continue directly on into Emma. Not go back to the beginning once I'd covered my bases for AP lit.

I've seen so many adaptions of Emma (Clueless, a Masterpiece Theatre miniseries, the Gwyneth Paltrow one, now Emma Approved) that it seemed like I really did need to check it against the actual story.

I'd forgotten until I saw Emma Approved how much I'd enjoyed the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, back years ago. I just wonder why I didn't try Emma Approved earlier. And now I'm wondering if it would be practical to watch one episode every couple of lunch times with my girlfriend, or something. Of either show. Just to have watched something together, no matter how many times we'd watched it alone.

I still keep thinking of Emma Approved in my sleep, even with several days since I finished and the original books to care about. That was a good adaption, Alex's proposal was closer to what it should've been even if he didn't say "my dearest Emma, for dearest you will always be" and that's the phrase I swear I wait through the entire book for, which makes all of it worthwhile.

And having read so much in the car? To think I used to think that made me car sick!

I am very much a Janeite I think this is obvious by now.

#science olympiad #novel #jane austen #road trip #emma approved #mansfield park #ap lit

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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This year they're actually not doing physical, paid for rules manuals I think I heard? Anybody wanna clarify about this?

chem notes + science olympiad 💙💙💙

#science Olympiad #rules manuals

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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I just want to admire this because 1. Satellites 2. Things about girls in STEM just make me proud and optimistic 3. Satellites being used for genuinely good purposes 4. The girls in STEM thing again 5. The girls in STEM thing again, and see? You can learn stuff at a young age and it makes a difference, and it also makes a difference at any age

Getting girls into STEM and helping their homeland at the same time. Amazing. (x) | follow @the-future-now

#remote sensing #satellites #girls in stem

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narrator-scio-story · 7 years

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So again this shows one way that idk if my novel represents everyone's reality. Even in our town, the other high school used to have Science subject area oriented tests and a general test, rather than having event specific tests at the beginning of the year. At least all the time I've been in high school, my team has done event specific tests from the beginning of the year, but also, we have a big program where that's necessary and there are loads of people wanting every spot. As usual, everyone has a different experience of scioly and it's interesting to hear how other people's clubs are done, but I only really know my own experience. Still. That's what we have the meme group and the forums and stuff for. To learn about each other's scioly experiences.

I really want to make the scioly team this year, but my school has a tryout test---a general one, one that nobody knows exactly what it holds. Do you have any tips on what to prioritize on studying? Thank you!

honestly, i have no clue since my coach only does tryout tests if there are multiple people who want the same event. i’d suggest asking an upperclassman or a friend who’s already taken the test for tips. if not, study the sciences that you’re actually interested in. it’ll show what your real strengths and interests lie which will help your coach with assigning events to people on the team. if you’re really really worried, just blast through a couple of crash course science videos on the sciences that you know nothing of.

#science olympiad #scioly

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