#gradblrchallenge

#gradblrchallenge [final post]

featuring a photo from the beginning of the month, when i was actually striving for that work/study/life balance. alas. 

i’m sorry for not being active this past week. i’ve been going through some stuff & sometimes that makes it hard to talk even to my family, so i really couldn’t bring myself to post anything here. however! i really wanted to thank you all for this past month, and thank @thehistorygrad for hosting the challenge!! it’s been amazing seeing all you guys’s progress & i’m very grateful to have got to know you a little bit :) i’m really excited to keep following along & hopefully sharing my own journey to and through a phd very soon!

i had a student. we will call him Sam. Sam had an overbearing father and missed about a month and a half of my class before dropping it a week before the semester was over and after turning in only three of about a couple dozen assignments. Sam clearly did not want to be in college, but his father wanted him to be in college. 

i didn’t know Sam had an overbearing father, but i didn’t know because i wasn’t looking. part of me had bought into this narrative that there wasn’t anything i could do because he hadn’t told me that something was wrong, and there wasn’t much i could do, but i could have just stopped making a bad situation worse. Sam, like many people, probably knew how to deal with his father and had a ten point plan for dropping out college by being kicked out. We’re all experts on our abusers, but rarely on other people’s, is the biggest thing I learned here. 

the teacher that i am now would have quietly reached out to him, handled any questions from the department myself without involving him, and just let him drop the class. it’s a requirement, so if he wanted to, he would have to retake it, he still would have had to pay for it, and it wouldn’t have cost me anything but a signature and a meeting or two. 

the teacher that i was when i was starting out with only two weeks of training didn’t realize that, and dragged it out for months, plenty of emails, lots of yelling, and a lot of guilt that i didn’t just recognize the situation for what it was. i know better now, and i have actively treated students better and helped them better because of it. if you teach, you know intimately that we fuck up constantly, and the only thing we can do is treat our future students with belated kindness, and our former students with a lot of distant grace. i hope Sam is okay and far away from his dad. That is the most I can do without causing further harm, and I have to learn to be okay with that. 

To round up the last day of the gradblrchallenge, here’s proof that I actually finally did the Imaris analysis! It really is such an incredible program. That being said, I’m super happy to finally be so close to wrapping up my summer rotation. Right now, I’m trying to decipher two of my classmates’ notes from the cellular neuro class that I missed on Thursday. This class seems to have gone from zero to five million in just the first class, so I’m sort of terrified, but maybe when I’m actually in the lecture it’ll make more sense. There also… is a lot of math in these notes… which I do not appreciate…. 

One really cool thing that’s happened is that I got an email about a negative data club at my school, which is essentially exactly what it sounds like. People can make a short presentation about any negative data they’ve gotten or data that’s been particularly frustrating/difficult to publish, and then present it to the rest of the club. I really like this idea because honestly, negative data is super important in science but is often overlooked, and it’s also a great place for peer support. Nothing is worse than spending hours/weeks/MONTHS on an experiment that ends up failing and then feeling like you have nowhere to turn to vent these frustrations. I don’t have anything to present so far, but I’m sure I will at some point, so I definitely plan on coming to the meeting.  I have an “interview” next week to see if I’m a good match for a graduate student group therapy thing that meets weekly, so I’m hoping that will be good. I’m nervous about being so vulnerable (past group therapy has all been not really my choice) but I think it will be helpful. 

Other things to get done: 

Price compare places to order contacts and then actually order contacts

Read and annotate journal club article 

Review NSF GRFP stuff before the info session on Thursday 

Attend grant writing workshop, also on Thursday (RIP me) 

Pay utilities bill

Well, #gradblrchallenge is over. I was absolutely terrible at posting this month. I was so busy with work, and so tired by the end of the day, weekends were spent trying to catch up in class, and any spare moment I had was used trying to keep up with basic chores and rest. This summer was a blur…

I’m hoping the fall with be less hectic. I’ll only be taking two courses, and my summer temp job has ended so I’ll have plenty of time to focus just on school.

i’m home!! and not only am i home but i’m home for five consecutive weeks, the first time i’ve been back here for more than a week since… APRIL? yeah, april, oh my god. anyway i got back around 7 last night, walked juno, and then passed out. today is a get-it-together day; it’s 1PM; so far i have

walked the dog

played a muddy game of tag with the dog

unpacked

washed 2 loads of laundry

took out the trash, scrubbed the trash can

vacuumed the living room

mopped the kitchen

cleaned my bathroom

finished writing up comments on a friend’s chapter, sent it back

turned in the last of my cambridge paperwork for fall

typed up my notes from dallas

checked the mla job list for the first time in 4 days

 i’m gonna go drop some stuff off at the mailbox, grocery shop, and  get a pizza for lunch on the way home, because i intend to spend the rest of today chilling the hell out (with the exception of a few last cover letter tweaks, before i forget everything from this seminar). 

So it’s Friday, and I think I’ve caught a cold. It could be from any number of people, honestly; despite Wednesday’s pseudo-springtime temperatures, it’s been pretty chilly these last few weeks and there’s definitely something going around. I’m bundled up in the library this afternoon so I can keep vaguely warm. 

I’ve finally done the three extracurricular things that have been looming over me all month—rescheduling a bunch of teaching, reworking & presenting an Ableton project, and a phone interview this morning—and now I have a lot more time! Right now I’m finally getting rid of all the duplicate files in my old student OneDrive, and organising all the article PDFs I’ve downloaded over the years. Then later I’m going on a Pokéwalk with some friends before the Water Festival finishes. 

This weekend I’m determined to get some writing done. I know it’ll take a lot of focus, which is something I struggle with. I’ve always struggled with homework, but it really feels like since my ADHD diagnosis last November I’ve been unconsciously setting the bar much lower for myself. On the one hand, it’s wonderful to find out that there are many strategies out there that work for people with brains like mine, but on the other hand, it’s awfully easy to just accept ADHD as an impassable limitation and convince myself to stop trying to reach for the stars (or even reach for the bare minimum, when I’m feeling really down). 

I’ll make it work, though. Once I start feeling the flow in a writing session, I really love this topic. I just have to start writing so that I can get there.

I have been absolutely horrible about posting this time around. With the semester starting back up and having homework dumped on me, it’s hard to get to posting on tumblr after I’m home for the day. But I’ve been getting a lot done! Finished my first book for early modern historiography, started reading The Faerie Queen, and have been consistently taking notes for lit criticism since the semester began. 

This week, I need to:

read The Civilizing Process and write a response

read Book 1 Cantos 5-12 of Faerie Queen

read Plato’s Ion and a selection from Aristotle’s Poetics and annotate both

The past week has…not been fantastic. I haven’t done much academic-wise, except for TA training yesterday and meeting with the professor I’m TA-ing for. Monday was getting the estimate for my car and general anxiety. Today was therapy and general anxiety and also crying in said therapy appointment.

I got to campus early today and didn’t leave until like 10PM so I am completely exhausted. First day of school means that everything is about to go to hell in a hand basket. I move in three or four days and I haven’t figured anything out at all. My entire state of mind is just generally confused and overwhelmed and I’m not particularly happy with myself for not knowing how to handle it, but what else is new?

Other than that, I’m excited to get started being a TA again tomorrow. The professor I’m working with has been going through a lot of personal tragedy and I can tell that it might have a bit of an impact on how he operates this semester, so I’m glad this is my only responsibility in this arena. If I had to teach a section or two on top of this I would probably shave my hair off and go more batshit than I already am. Reminder: you are doing too much and not getting paid enough, have boundaries and don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself. Easier said, but worth reminding folks of? Tomorrow will be a lot, but I’m ready. Bigger hills!

today i

finished my reading of counter-statement for this week

finished my intellectual autobiography assignment for my pedagogy course

started my readings for my pedagogy course

set up my desk to-do list

grabbed scantrons and other supplies from the closet

put some food in the fridge for tomorrow, albeit accidentally whoops

Downloaded books and chose book for Burke book report

Tomorrow I

Have first class session

Have rhetorical criticism class

Need to buy snacks and hair stuff

Need to put a sweater in my locker and leave it there

Need to call some basic movers for Saturday

Need to email some folks and see if they can also help with said move

Need to look for flights and shit to GA for Christmas and also for NCA

I'm beginning to fall into a routine (or so I think). I'm juggling a couple projects reasonably well, and I'm making a habit of doing Arabic review when I'm sitting in office hours for the grad admin position Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

I came to the conclusion yesterday that I'm comparing myself to others too much. I really need to slow that down. Why am I doing that? When I don't think I'm enough -- forget the question of "enough compared to who," rather, who am I not enough for? Really, I should only be worried about myself. Is that to say I'm not enough for myself? And of course I balk at that question.

It’s been an intense few days. I had two qualifying exams this week, on on Tuesday and one today. I’m sorry I haven’t been updating much - I’ve mostly been trying to study or stressing about studying. Anyway:

you all probably know I completely bombed algebra on Tuesday

like, straight up bombed it

I answered ¼ questions fully and wrote whatever unsuccessful bullshit I’d tried for the others

it’s okay though because I am Not an algebraist (despite my url) and I still have another shot at passing it

today’s was SO much better than Tuesday’s, though

real analysis/topology is my shit and I love it and will almost definitely end up doing something related to it

anyway I’m pretty sure I passed because I answered all the questions I had to and I feel good about my answers

so yeah at least I passed one of my exams lol

anyway it’s all good now and I have the long weekend to clean up my house and prepare for my classes/TA job

had Long Lunch with my chair on thursday and received a horrified expression followed by a Stern Talking-To when i gave her my summer update. so here is a list of things i did the past few days in lieu of working, on her orders:

baked cookies

washed the dog

played an ungodly amt of sims

grocery shopped

birthday party for my roommate!!

ate with friends every damn night!! including peruvian this weekend and romanian tonight

hung out with my psychiatrist and talked about the stress of his double mortgage 

got lunch with my other advisor, which could be construed as work except she paid for my dumplings and i just sort of made inarticulate sounds of anxiety at her for an hour

re-booked my canceled london flights for october

took a friend to the airport

08.27.2019

I finished transcribing my data today! It took longer than I expected, but it’s currently 18 pages. I transcribed about twice as much as I expected to (I think it’s relevant). So it’s important for me to be forgiving with myself.

The first day of the new semester was yesterday. Since I’m not in any classes, I didn’t really notice it. I am president of a club, so I am managing the organization renewal stuff. I spent 2 hours putting together an agenda for the first meeting last night.

My research group is moving grad student offices, so that has been a constant stressor when I come into the office. Today, we had a 2.5 hour planning meeting and the move is set to happen in about a week and half. I will be out of town for it, but am happy with the plans. My new office will have windows and I am beyond excited about that! Yesterday, I cleared out my desk and have removed my stuff from the current office. 

My replacement phone is set to arrive tomorrow and I am so excited for it to arrive. Although, doing work on an old, slow phone definitely reduced my screen time.