On The Mothership

Note: This essay is not written based on any studies made by social researchers or statistics. These are purely thoughts and observations of my own personal experience. Pt. 1: Commercialization First things first, I do like knowledge and learning. I think it's great. What I don't think is great is how over-commercialized and unnecessary a large part of higher education is. College is expensive. You're paying for tuition, books, dorms (if you stay on campus), and various other fees. Then there's the money spent on gas to get to campus, food, and the general cost of living. All for a piece of paper that essentially says, "You done it! Now go out with this diploma and struggle to find a job in the field that you spent 8 years of your life studying for." I see commercials advertising for different colleges and the image that they put forth is nothing like the reality that students face. Stress, test anxiety, buckets of tears, and loss of sleep from staying u...

These days, there's a lot of pressure put on young girls. Advertisements blare from televisions and their phone screens, telling them to have an attractive face and body. In general, expecting them to meet society's expectations. However, this is unrealistic and unacceptable. Sure, we want to be perceived as beautiful, but what's the point in becoming obsessed with how we look that we forget to be happy and just live? Fact: Life is short. Shorter than you think and someday, you'll die. If life is so short, shouldn't we be spending it doing things that we love and spending time with those we love? Perhaps it's a bit of a cliché thing to say, but it's true. True beauty is measured not in symmetrical facial features or a perfect body, but in our dispositions and our soul. If our hearts show beauty, then it will shine through our faces. Which, reminds me of a quote by Audrey Hepburn. Throughout history, beauty standards have changed so frequently...

The whole point of minimalism is to only have the things that you need, right? Of course, as humans, we need food, water, clothes, and shelter. However, minimalism shouldn't be seen as trying to survive life on the fewest items possible. Rather, it should be seen as enjoying life by only having the things that we only use and enjoy having. Throughout the past two weeks, I've been removing the extraneous, in order to make room for what I find to be truly valuable. I even went through my dear books and got rid of several that I had been meaning to read for the past three years. After all, if I had really wanted to read them, I would have already read them, wouldn't I? Now, I've removed my clothes dresser and put my desk in its place. I now have a useful workplace to do my homework and writing and sketching. I've been through all my old documents and notebooks. Space has been made on my bookshelf for my collection of Volkswagen Beetle models. My desk is always clea...

First things first: Resolutions 1. Utilize my time In January, I was still getting used to this idea of constant productivity, so it didn't always work out as well as I would like. Things are starting to get better in the way of productivity though, so it's just a matter of seeing how well I can keep this up. 2. Organize my life I am thoroughly using my Bullet Journal, as mentioned in my post "On The New Year", every day. It helps keep track of my tasks for the day and months, as well as notes I make or thoughts I may have on things. On the topic of cleaning out unwanted items, I have been doing my research on minimalism and it seems like my answer to doing a major clean-out of my room. I will be blogging on my experience with a minimalistic lifestyle in the future. 3. Find balance between what I want to do and what I need to do This, by far, has actually been one of my easier resolutions to keep. Because I have constructed my daily schedule to make room f...