zel studies

Notes from My Desk #15 | 5/7/26

I finished my study plan! It's kind of front-loaded, so the day still looks very long.. but not all tasks are big, so I need to remember that. Anyway, this way I have room if some tasks don't get finished in one day, to move them to the next one, and I'm thinking on Sundays I'll reschedule properly for the next week. Sounds simple, but it gets difficult when you have to be responsible for it all by yourself, for me at least.

I mentioned 7 courses before, but I'm doing 14 different courses with the latest deadline I set for myself to better spread the tasks out. Still the same 5 subjects though, so I think from now on I'll just post about them by subject, and whatever tasks I do under the subjects in general. Here's my colour coding if anyone's interested:

Chemistry → 🟢 Social Studies → 🟡 Literature → 🔴 Mathematics → 🟣 English → 🔵 Other → ⚪️

That's why you see me mark my personal studies with the white ball every day. Speaking of which...

Studies: ⚪️ studied 285 flashcards (30 min.)

Highlights: ⭐️Journaled a whole page, when the goal was 3 sentences ⭐️ Took a walk in the drizzle, it was fun! ⭐️ Finished reading Tosi kivat juhlat by Tuomas Kokko ⭐️ Did full body IPL, now I won't have to worry about it for a couple of days

Tomorrow: ➡️Get right into it with my studies ➡️Spend more time with language studies if I have time

💭 I feel like a lady-in-waiting, except the princess is just me receiving self-care.

Notes from My Desk #5 | 20/6/26

Had a chill day celebrating midsummer, but I also got some things done. I went on a jog (I'm really enjoying getting back into the routine!!), vacuumed and organized the bathroom a bit. Left the rest of my chores for Sunday, though.

I spent decent time studying both French and Greek. I did 35 minutes of basics for French. I don't really have goals for it, I just noticed it was slipping down to my 5th language so I decided to brush up on it this summer. For Greek I also did mainly revision for 1 hour and 10 minutes. It's a challenge, but such an intriguing one, and it's definitely a language that something in my personality is drawn to.

Studies: ⚪️French revision - basic introductions, numbers 0-39 ⚪️Greek revision - είμαι-verb, basic introductions, the informal and formal object pronouns

Highlights: ⭐️ Had Brita cake...mmm... ⭐️ Enjoyed reading again, ahh, I'm on a roll ⭐️ Still the cake... so good, you guys...

Tomorrow: ➡️Finish the week's chores ➡️Stretch, because I've been slacking

💭 So happy to be getting a hold of my routines again - The priviledge of free time in the summer is unreal.

[19/6/26] long time no post! i made it through exams (well, i sure hope i passed. everyone pray for me) and now i have so much to do and nothing to do again.

im working on my dissertation which is like statistical mechanics and complexity science-- so smth i know nothing about. i used the special topics summer school as an excuse last week, but i also have weekly meetings with my undergrad group bc papers are so hard and i hate collider analysis. the postdoc is pulling a lot of the weight rn but i really should get my shit together.

but i wanna have fuuuuun. its so sunny outside i wanna froliccccc. fuck grinding in the libraryyyyyy.

200326 𝜗ৎ

26.02.26 ✨ i'm convinced my master's thesis advisor is an actual angel. how did i get so lucky.

no one is spending enough time complaining about writing

hierarchy is wrong. your grad student TA is not a professor or faculty and might not even be considered an employee. that 32 year old man is not a full professor no matter how talented he is or how old you think 30+ is, and he should be talking more about "the tenure clock"

grad students only ever taking or TAing classes & never doing research or working on their thesis/dissertation. there are masters programs with no thesis component so i'm sure there are ones that have no research requirement, but you can't get a PhD only taking classes

everyone has too much money. but also if it's set in the US there's an obsession with accumulating student debt for positions that generally you would not have to take out loans for

relationship with academic advisor never sufficiently unhinged

"I got so angry that ISIS was disrupting the research." -> Said on record to a journalist in the actual middle of an interview.

Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, socially, financially.

Life is asking a lot right now.

Pause when you can. Breathe when you remember.