Posts

Life of a Probashi Bengali

Image
 Hello everyone! Welcome back to month 26 of #faltufriday! For most of you who don't know me, I am a 'Probashi Bengali', which literally means a Bengali living outside of Bengal in India. I grew up spending my initial years all over the world and finally settled down in India when I turned four. Over the years of growing up, I've experienced a lot of enjoyable moments and had various instances a lot of my fellow probashi Bengali's might relate to, so I figured I'd share a few with you guys :) Without further ado, let's get to a non-stereotypical life of a probashi!  Firstly, Boroline. Boroline is Bengali Bae. Go anywhere in the world, ask any Bengali for a boroline, you can count on them to have one in their bag. Always. Bengali's are not always about 'laal shaada'(Red and White) saari's, they're also about 'laal checked' gamchas(Towel). You will 100% find this in every probashi Bengali household. The endless struggle of choosing ...

Types of Procrastinators

Image
 Hi everyone and welcome back! If you have been following me since the beginning of my journey, you may have noticed that I have thrown limelight procrastination by basing a few posts on them. Today's post is yet another super demanded post, however, is only slightly linked to 'teenage mental health' - the niche of my blog. Nevertheless, hope y'all enjoy reading it and without further ado, let's get to it! Procrastinators can broadly be classified under 3 groups. If you google them the results look something like this: 1. The Perfectionist These are the type of people who tend to spend so much time thinking over their task or solving one minute issue that they end up wasting the entire time dedicated to the task. They ideally procrastinate when they are overwhelmed with the fear of producing work of a low standard, or fear of failing, and in a few cases victims of OCD. 2. The Avoider Or whom I like to call, the 'ho jayega' one's. These constitute the peo...

Cyber Bullying

Image
 Hello everyone and welcome back! I had authored a post titled  Social Media Is Bad For Your Mental Health!  which led me to ponder over one of the most common ill effects of it - the effect of Cyber Bullying on our mental health. A lot of us are probably well acquainted with the term "Cyber Bullying"; but for some who aren't, here's a basic overview of it: What is Cyber Bullying?  When you google this term, the first sentence that pops up reads, " The use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. " In simpler words, a person (mostly adolescents) is bullied, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed, or targeted in some way by another person. It is similar to real life physical bullying except it is done by both known as well as unknown people on the internet. They tend to name call, troll and threaten the other person.  This brings us to the next, and the most important part of this post...

Importance of "Mental Health Days"

Image
 Hey everyone! Welcome back!! In all honesty, I was not well acquainted with the term "Mental Health Days" until I saw it in a TV show . This led me to thinking if something like this actually exists, and if so, how can it benefit us? So, I did my research, started implementing it in my personal life and wanted to share with you the importance of the same :) Without further ado, let's get to it! Starting off with the obvious, What is a "Mental Health Day" If your first thought was something related to taking a break, you would be correct. A Mental Health Day is one where you absolutely cut off from your rat race life and take a step back to rejuvenate yourself. It’s a day to relax, decompress and take care of yourself overall. For example, if you've just finished with your exams and sacrificed on your sleep schedule a lot, its regaining that. If you've burnt yourself out with various stressors, its taking a pause from it.  It's taking time out to rel...

Video Games and Mental Health

Image
 Hello everyone and welcome back to a fresh new month! Video Games and Mental Health - Are They Related? Perhaps every teen's obsession at some point of their lives was playing these games.  Be it Fortnite, PubG or Minecraft, no one has ever given it a thought if in reality it has any links to your mental health. I was acquainted with this topic during my time at Harvard and thought it would be a great idea to throw some limelight on this topic :) So without further ado, let's get to it! While most parents might argue that the influence of video games has been negative, recent studies show that playing video games in fact has also had a positive impact on a person's mind. A lot of us must be familiar with the fact that it improves hand and eye coordination, helps you focus better and even learn better. But did you know, it also simultaneously increases as well as decreases your social resilience ?  There has been a steep rise in the level of social anxiety sufferers ev...

HAPPY 2 YEARS!!

Image
(Face reveal part II!)  HELLO EVERYONE!! Welcome to MY TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #faltufriday BLOG POST!! (okay enough with the screaming now) Thank you so so much to literally everyone out there who has supported me these past 2 years - couldn't have reached here without y'all <3 I took a short poll on my Instagram asking what you all would want for a 2 year special and majority of y'all voted for  My reflections and learnings over the past 2 years   (without further ado, let's get to it!) To be frank, I actually did not imagine myself writing a blog post for a 2 year special. Not that I didn't see this as a long term project; just didn't hit me 2 years ago when I started out that I would come this far so fast. I know it sounds clichéd, but the first thing I'd say that I learnt from blogging would be perseverance . I'd had both good and bad days, some posts took off and some didn't - but I wouldn't let the ones that didn't break throug...

Math Anxiety

Image
  Hello everyone and welcome back! Just to be clear, this isn't an entirely different subfield of Anxiety, as in the disorder, rather just another 'type' of anxiousness we feel - similar to Eco Anxiety ; up to the level of being scared of it. I had this period too. I used to cry before exams, begging for some miracle to occur. After research, I found out that Maths particularly is one subject whose incomprehension attacks us the most.  The reason:  Maths is a whole other language .  Though you'll find some English in it, majority of it is just a bunch of random symbols making sense. What is "Math Anxiety" and its Impact? Maths anxiety can also be called as a feeling of tension and apprehension that interferes with performance ability, especially in math, and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations. Math anxiety is more than just feeling nervous about doing math. It's feeling anxious about everything r...

Toxic Friendships

Image
Hello everyone and welcome back!  With friendship day around the corner, I wanted to throw light on a pretty unspoken topic based on it! A lot of us have probably heard of the term 'Toxic Friendships' but not done such a great job at recognizing it. I've had my share too and definitely had a tough time recognizing it until recently. This "revelation" led me to think about how common this is, having witnessed several, and how we can recognize and put an end to one. P.s. This post is not promoting the idea of calling out your friendships and breaking them on the spot because of one red flag, but just to spread awareness that such stuff still exists and you must try to not be one.  So, without further ado, let's get to it!   Firstly starting off, What IS a 'Toxic Friendship'? In simple words, friendships where you feel burdened by the other persons company can be called a toxic friendship. The friendship tends to be more of a competition rather than a hea...

Burnout After 10th.

Image
(Another B99 reference!)  Hey everyone and welcome back! Today's post is quite personal because this is something that I went through recently and I know a lot of my peers did too.  The underlying fact however is, none of us want to admit it. For most of you who don't know, I recently passed 10th grade a couple of months ago and I am just a few weeks into Grade 11. I spoke about my experience in 10th grade:   H ere but I wanted to talk about what happens after 10th grade.  In simple words, A slump. (Keep in mind, I'm authoring this post just 2 months into 11th grade)  I recently hit a slump (probably still in it haha) which led me to think, why not talk about it? Most people are going through one? The fact is that, at least in an Indian education system, people put a lot of pressure on 10th Grade - and that pressure is valid. 10th is super important for life and you need to work hard this year.  What most people discard is that we burn ourselves out ...

Harvard you this fine day?

Image
 Hey everyone and welcome back to month 24 of #faltufriday! And no, this post is not clickbait - I really did go to Harvard for their summer school! I spent a few weeks learning not just my course content but also a lot of other things I wanted to share with y'all. So, without further ado, let's get to it! My Course I am fascinated by the links between computer science and psychology so the course I had gone with was Digital Media: Society, Culture and Economics. This turned out to be the perfect fit for me which also made it so much easier to learn because it didn't seem like a burden. We would have daily readings as homework, but on the days that we were lucky, we'd get movies to watch as homework too! In fact, the first class was so engaging that we could complete only half of what we had planned for the day. Throughout the course, we went in-depth with a lot of digital media concepts; my favourite being when we learnt about VFX and had a (horrendous) screening of th...