A Wear jacket / Barkins shirt / Topshop jeans / thrifted belt / Nine West shoes
I'd never really considered this spot in my backyard to be a very good place to take outfit photos. Since it's in the shade, the grass is always damp which makes it not the most pleasant place to prance around in heels. But they were doing construction this morning in my usual photo spot, so this was a bit of a last resort...and I'm so happy, because this has to be my new favorite place! It's surprisingly photogenic considering the fact that in real life, it generally looks like an miniature jungle of overgrown weeds, which is why I've always overlooked it. It kind of makes me wonder what other treasures I've disregarded because my attitude was stupid and shallow at that particular moment...
In other news, I got back a major assignment today (the one on the history of secularism) -- 90%! You have no idea how much this means to me. In Australia, 75+ is considered extremely good, and it's what I always aim for; long story short, it doesn't happen very often for me, but this time it did, and I'm shocked and ecstatic at how big of a margin I passed it by! I thought it was a typo when I saw it on my paper; I honestly believed my tutor meant to write '70%' but then the 7 came out funny. The revelation that it was, in fact, a 9, resulted in a few more minor mental heart attacks...the good kind, of course. ;D I'd figured that it would've been pretty obnoxious to celebrate/brag while in class, so I'm doing it now on this blog. Ahhh...I'm pretty much completely content with my life right now... :)
look twice
growing up
J. Crew top / ASOS skirt / Topshop belt / ASOS shoes
Let's ignore my horrible roots and focus on a few of my other deficiencies. I am sadly lacking in wardrobe essentials. It's sort of embarrassing how long I've been searching for a pair of basic black leather flats; you'd think they'd be everywhere, but none of the ones I've found are perfect, they're either too expensive, too bulky, too flimsy, too orthopedic-looking, or too polyurethane-y. I'm still holding out for my dream pair, hopefully it'll be worth the wait! Another thing that I've been on the hunt for is a skinny black leather high-waist belt; no frills, no embellishments, just the belt. Once again, it's been surprisingly difficult to find the perfect one, and so I'm holding out. It's funny that I've spent years going crazy accumulating random, colorful, out-there clothes that I never even stopped to put together a foundational wardrobe. I've grown up a bit since then, and now I finally understand the sense in doing it. Better late than never, I suppose.
I'm so happy that I finally feel like I'm starting to grow up, too. You know on your birthday, you expect to suddenly be older, and you're always disappointed that you don't feel any different? That's been the case for me for years, it was as if I got to a certain point, mentally/emotionally, and just sort of stagnated for a few birthdays. I felt like a child imposter in an adult world, trying so desperately to stay afloat while watching everyone else master everything like it was nothing. That fear's been fading ever so gradually, and I can only assume that it's a product of growing up. I'm just glad to realize that I'm not abnormal after all. Because as unique and exemplary as we claim to be (as we shout it from the rooftops), deep down I know that all we want is just to fit in.
witchy toes
Topshop sweater / Poof Excellence top / American Apparel skirt / ASOS socks / Mossimo shoes
Warning: the following rant has nothing to do with my outfit!
It's nearly midnight and I've spent the entire day working on another assignment; this one's about South Sudan's (torturous) path to independence. Honestly, the Middle East and Africa must be the most fascinating region to learn about, there's just so much history, so much bloody conflict, it simply never ends. I know I've said this before, but I feel cheated that all I ever got in school was a (very narrow) history of the US and Europe. Year after year, that's all we studied in history. I remember one particular world history class, we started in Ancient Egypt, skipped several thousand years to the Enlightenment, then right to the World Wars, and then oh what? Cold War's over! An entire semester, and that was literally it.
Another big thing that sticks in my mind was the fact that we only ever really learned events in isolation; it was like, X happened in 1843, Y happened in 1856. No sense of causality, continuity, connection. I suppose that was why so many people found history boring; nobody ever bothered to tell it like a story, like the way it actually happened. Sure we learned that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand set off World War I, but we never learned why. It was just, this happened, then this other thing happened, they're somehow connected, but really, they're just two facts that you need to memorize for the test.
I guess I can sympathize with the fact that educators just don't have the time to teach everything that has ever happened in the world, but the bias against the Global South is absolutely mindboggling. You know, spend a couple weeks out of thirteen years of education to teach about South America, the Middle East, and Africa, maybe? I'm sure I can survivor without the second, third, and fourth times studying the Enlightenment. Maybe the continued influence of the Enlightment in the West is reason enough to study it, and because of that, it's more relevant to us than, say, the Islamization of Southern Sudan. That whole idea of 'out of sight, out of mind' just rubs me the wrong way, though; it's like an excuse to remain ignorant.
Did you know that South Sudan became the world's newest state in 2011? Very well-deserved, I'd say, considering all the crap it's had to put up with from the North: two civil wars and a mess-load of oppression. All right, I'm off to bed now, hopefully my next entry will be more cheerful in content, haha. :)