R.

finals are around the corner ! starting off with criminal law today… 📝📝📝

if you’re also going through your finals I’m sending you a lot of strength, love and luck💫💫💫 !! we got this ! ure a killer⭐️.

20|07|2026

Master thesis adventures #39

I usually don't work on uni stuff on Mondays because I work all morning and end up being quite tired in the afternoon. But today I decided to have a quick hour of planning the last section of the chapter, so that hopefully tomorrow I can go straight into writing.

2026年7月22日

december 8

i don’t sit with this often enough: i live in an apartment that looks and feels like it is mine. the walls house art that caught my eye. my book collection lines all the shelves in all the rooms. i can sit perched on my floor cushion, here in my living room, and a single glance about the room reveals it: i’m surrounded by possessions that feel like me. that exude my tastes, my preferences, that capture a selfhood now immortalized (if immortality is a 12-month lease) in space.

there have been points during my phd where i’ve caught myself subscribing to longstanding academic messages about accomplishment and hustle and competition. as someone who used her academics to make sense of her place in a new country, i am no stranger to academic validation as fuel.

as a 4th year doc student, however, i find myself more motivated to retain my identity outside of my work. i see it as a hard-earned epiphany, which struck me just as burnout was settling in alongside the desperation to see joy and color back in my day-to-day life. don’t get me wrong - i am on this path because i care about the work i do and the work i can do. but there is more to life and myself than fieldwork hours and dissertation writing and worrying about internship applications.

this is what i held on to this morning, visiting a nearby coffee shop that i’ve always wanted to try but never have. i woke up with dread and panicked-hamster-wheel-thoughts about whether i’m competitive enough for a fellowship or whether i’m doing okay in comparison to my peers or whether my cv is worthy (translation: whether i am worthy). i made the decision to shake these thoughts away today, go outside, journal and read, and just be more. be human.