What is a hillbilly?

I think I have mentioned quite a few times that I really like watching TV shows. One of my current favorites is "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" from the 90s.:

There are four actors who play out different improv games, which contents are based on suggestions from the audience or from the producers of the show. The actors work notably well together and think of the most hilarious things off the top of their heads. In some games they have to fulfill character suggestions, which are often stereotypes. One is quite often suggested: the stereotype of a hillbilly. Wikipedia defines a hillbilly the following:

Hillbilly is a term for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas of the United States, primarily southern Appalachia but also the Ozarks. Owing to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term can be offensive to those Americans of Appalachian heritage.

Here's a good example of how the "Whose Line" cast likes to interpret the hillbillies:



The reason I'm posing is that while I was reading about Appalachia for the next Progress Check, the actors of the show doing their hillbilly parodies kept popping into my head. They do exaggerate a lot, but like we also mentioned in class: stereotypes do help to get a slight image of what it's really like there. And now I finally know who the cast of "Whose Line" are trying to show.

Help, I'm procrastinating!

You're spending your precious study time watching television, reading stuff on the internet and/or drink your fifth coffee just to avoid studying? And it doesn't feel good at all, because you're feeling guilty for doing nothing productive? Cleaning the litter box of your cat seems incredibly attractive all of a sudden? This, my friends, is procrastination: the student's worst enemy.

I'm one of these people that are procrastinating until the very end of a deadline, and that's a horrible trait to have. You basically just keep doing things that are kind-of-fun instead of doing what you're supposed to do. And the guilt doesn't even let you enjoy this. I often look at the clock and say to myself: "the next full hour, you start studying. And you will be studying for hours until you know just everything!". And then, after spending some time doing "fun" stuff, I look at my clock again; it's five minutes past full hour. And I say to myself: "okay, the next full hour will be the start of your studying marathon. This time for real!". And you know what? Nothing happens. Nothing!

However, yesterday I read an article on HackCollege named "Understanding Procrastination". It basically says that the cure for procrastination is to simply understand procrastination. The author says that we tend to spend our time doing everything but studying because our brain wants us to be happy and/or entertained now, and not after studying vocabulary for hours.

But, according to the article, you can trick your brain by visualizing your future success on a test. The good feeling you have when you get a good grade is much better than the things we suddenly want to do instead of studying. And this is something our brain has to understand. With a positive attitude it's possible to reach the goal of a good grade. I think the author describes it best with these wise words: "just know that you get out what you put in". With the future positive feeling in your mind, textbooks and worksheets won't look that mean and evil anymore. This doesn't mean that studying for hours will be suddenly possible; rewarding yourself after mastering a chunk of study content is important too and will get you motivated though.

It sounds too simple, I know, but today I was more productive than the whole past week. I also don't feel that scared of our assessment anymore. Maybe HackCollege's article will help some of you as well -- even it is just by lessening your fear.

Big Think

You know these times in which you get lost in the world wide web? Times in which absolutely everything on the internet seems interesting? I usually get lost on YouTube quite often then. I start watching a cat video and end up in the so-called "strange parts of YouTube", where the conspiracies are usually blooming, so I often go scared to bed.

But this time I found something very interesting: a YouTube channel called Big Think. Basically, their videos consist of scientists talking about various topics in short clips. These are mostly about psychology and (mostly American) politics, but they also discuss ongoing technical topics or talk about their own personal experiences. They explain their topics in a simple and understandable way, so that one can follow complicated topics without a problem, which make the topics even more interesting.

My favorite video so far shows Michio Kaku explaining how Brain-to-Brain Communication could be possible one day:


br>But there are so many more interesting topics on that page! There is even an hour-long presentation about Linguistics (and how it helps understanding how the brain works) over here, but I am sure that there are other topics that could be interesting to you as well!