How to PhD? @howtophd - Tumblr Blog

Posts

Still trying to decide if getting my head round current UK politics is better or worse than trying to get my head round 17th/18th century UK politics.

#at this point I honestly can not tell #the main advantage when trying to understand 17th century UK politics is that it's not happening live on twitter #I'm joking but only just #not research #(or: mostly not research)

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality

Anya is LIVE right now

FREE

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

Is listening to metal while trying to read a book that is due at the library on Tuesday the most focused way of approaching this particular task? Probably not. But I can really use the mood booster.

#idk if I've mentioned but power metal is my No1 good mood music #the book is GOOD but because it's GOOD I want to take notes on everything #hence why I'm making very slow progress #today's music choice is HammerFall's Crimson Thunder album #phd student life

@redstar-winterorbit - aye!

Look, I know it looks a little granny and child-sized, but that’s because I’m a literal hobbit and this is the first-time since being a kid that I actually own a bike that fits my body size. XD

Surprisingly, not constantly feeling like you may fall off/hating to stop at traffic-lights because you can barely reach the ground does make a difference to how enjoyable/exhausting biking is. Who would have thought. (I’ve also found that I need to pay attention to posture, and while I want to joke/pretend it’s because I’m 35+, it’s actually because I’ve had a major surgery last year and if I don’t pay attention to posture & regular stretching/strength exercises, I get the Tense Upper Body From Hell. ‘Get the right size of things ffs’ is definitely on my list of Important Health Stuff I’m Making an Effort to Pay Attention To)

#90% of the time I don't mind being short except in those 10% of cases where it really makes stuff unnecessarily difficult #full disclosure: the fact that my new place is surrounded by a lot of very flat landscape definitely also helps with 'enjoying biking'#I'm one of those people who really dislikes getting somewhere completely exhausted and in need of a shower #conversation #reply

By the way, apologies for vanishing again. Turns out hormonal bad brain followed by extremely focused paper writing followed by conference travel followed by a well-deserved two weeks off isn’t really that conductive to keeping a blog updated. XD On the upside: The conference went well, the paper went well (+ comments were good), I saw a nice late 18th/early 19th century natural history collection (pics to follow maybe), and I also have a new bike (that I’ve so far mostly used to pick up library books and have coffee in picturesque places).

#I'm back to work now #now up: writing a book chapter and more of my thesis #updates pictures and replies to follow I hope #oh I forgot I ALSO applied for an academia-adjacent job but haven't heard back yet #phd student life

Readers of European travel books about Europe have pointed out that many of the conventions and writing strategies I associate here with imperial expansion characterize travel writing about Europe as well. As I suggest at several points in the discussion, when that is so, related dynamics of power and appropriation are likely to be found at work as well. The discourses that legitimate bourgeois authority and delegitimate peasant and subsistence lifeways, for example, can be expected to do this ideological work within Europe as well as in southern Africa or Argentina. The forms of social critique through which European women claim political voice at home make similar, though not identical, claims abroad. The eighteenth century has been identified as a period in which Northern Europe asserted itself as the center of civilization, claiming the legacy of the Mediterranean as its own. It is not surprising, then, to find German or British accounts of Italy sounding like German or British accounts of Brazil.

Mary Louise Pratt: Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992)

#gems from the reading #currently reading #on the craft #Mary Louise Pratt #Imperial Eyes #travel writing #relevant to my interests

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality

Anya is LIVE right now

FREE

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

I will say that, while I wasn’t here for two weeks, I at least got distracted by reading about museum collections, early 19th century (pre-Darwinian) takes on evolution, and books that (unwittingly?) feature botanical imperialism as a major plot point, and if that isn’t 100% on brand I don’t know what is.

#(I also got emotional about how difficult it is to find some of Melville's less popular works)#my fave topics that are not actually my PhD research #I try not to yell about this stuff around here too much #but the postcolonial lens is (unfortunately) firmly established these days #so I can't really read adventure stories as adventure stories any more without digging up the sources they were based on #phd student life

Sometimes when I read German research on colonial history I’m amazed how behind the times some people are (like... years or decades behind), just in terms of terminology and topics.

#vagueblogging because I don't want to name names #but honestly? some people really need to read more English/Spanish stuff #this is such a weird experience because I'm basically steeped in English-language research 24/7 (comes with the topic)#and most of my contacts are international too #it's not... bad per se I just can't see what's supposed to be new about some of these things #research problems

To Do

[22/08/2022]

Right, time to make a to do list again!

clean/tidy desk

scan book intro ch 1 ch 2

read articles 1 2

reply accomodation conference

blog maintenance

moving checklist for sister

fold bedsheets

laundry wash hang up

water vegetables

finish book

short story for bookclub

yoga

Guess whose PMS and assorted hormonal brain-weird was really bad this time round? Yeah.

Time to go back to slowly chipping away at tasks. Pretty sure I’m forgetting something, too. (I have been sticking to the time-blocking that I did earlier today so far, so I guess that’s a win.)

#love going from no energy/motivation straight to lots of motivation/energy but no ability to focus/decide what to focus on #to do #phd student life

curiouscatalog

W is for Wednesday woodcut

From: Geddes, Michael, 1650?-1713. Several tracts against popery. London : Printed by E.J. for B. Barker and C. King, 1715

#woodcuts #sources #early modern #queue

anocturnalreverie

such a good helper

#other people's desks #other people's research #queue

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality

Anya is LIVE right now

FREE

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

tributary

we shouldn’t trust historians to teach us history because they are people with biases. instead we should learn from instagram influencers, who would never lie to us.

#my sense of humour #at least if this wasn't what some people seriously believe #on the discourse #on the discipline #queue

upthespiralstaircase

howtophd

Bibliothek der Benediktinerabtei St. Peter auf dem Schwarzwald, Deutschland Library of the Benedictine Monastery St. Peter in the Black Forest, Germany (x)

#can we PLEASE give sources for these kinds of pictures instead of just tagging everything 'Dark Academia'#context matters #and that includes historical libraries #collections - books *and* museums - aren't just aesthetic they're also political #(I'm pretty sure this particular picture is copyrighted but ya know)#(not my division)#libraries

Right, friends, I’m oddly motivated and surprisingly awake now that it’s no longer 35+°C outside. Time to read another paper on colonial mapping and take bets how long it takes till someone mentions my special friends Alexander von Humboldt and/or Georges Cuvier.

#I've been joking about this on my personal blog for a while but those two dudes? are everywhere #especially if you read a lot about a) South America b) history of science or c) colonial collection/exploration projects #(they're both technically a century too late for me AND YET)#(Cuvier doesn't even have actual links to SAm as far as I know)#I am haunted by the spirits of dead early 19th century scientists #the soundtrack of the evening is Boccerini and Corelli I think #phd student life

Some impressions from the last week and a half

[25/07 - 03/08/2022]

#I have been Away a lot #(work stuff at my uni; library day yesterday)#have a couple of pretty houses instead of actual gradblr content #these are two different towns but the vibe is similar #bonus points to anyone who knows where these were taken XD #phd student life #my pictures

howtophd

Here also is a remarkable Creature called by the English a Sloath, by the Spaniards Pigritia, so named justly from the Dull sluggish nature of it, being of a very slow motion, it is somewhat shaped like a Cat, but of a larger body, and hath very long claws, is a great sleeper, and even when it moves looks drowsie like as if it were half sleeping.

Francis Borland, Memoirs of Darien, Glasgow, 1715. (via howtophd)

#bringing this back because I was rereading this source and Francis Borland's description of a sloth remains one of my favourite things ever #(though sadly rather irrelevant for the argument of my thesis)#gems from the sources

•18+ Adults Only

Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality

Anya is LIVE right now

FREE

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming

To Do

[29/07/2022]

Right, time to make a to do list again!

order books from library storage

finish reading article Indigenous guides in British Guiana

continue picking sources for conference paper

go through articles I downloaded from JSTOR (send help!)

blog maintenance

bedsheets wash hang up

pack parcel (+ post box?) *

trellis for courgette plants

water vegetables

finish book

*No longer relevant since this was for an online sale where the buyer insisted that I should give them a guarantee that the letter would arrive by Monday even though I told them repeatedly I couldn’t guarantee that because I’m still working and might not make the afternoon collection. (Especially since they hadn’t even transferred the money yet and literally asked about delivery till Monday at 10.30 am this morning). Fuck unreasonable expectations about other people’s availability; I’m not Amazon, I don’t *have* to guarantee next day delivery.

#to do #phd student life

@jamiethekeener tagged me - thank you!

rules: spell out either your name or username using only books or only movies that have your vibe, and tag some people.

I’m gonna do both my (nick)name and my username because the set of letters in my username is very limited and means I can’t include some of the things that are very my vibe XD

M - Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

E - (Die) Entdeckung der Langsamkeit (Sten Nadolny)

R - Real Estate (Deborah Levy)

R - (Die) Ringe des Saturn (W.G.Sebald)

Y - (My) Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh)

H - HMS Surprise (Patrick O’Brian)

O - Otherland (Tad Williams)

W - Waverley (Walter Scott)

T - The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien)

O - Orlando (Virginia Woolf)

P - Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)

H - Heinrich von Ofterdingen (Novalis)

D - Der gestiefelte Kater (Ludwig Tieck)

Clearly those are the wrong letters; I could not fit a single Olivia Laing, Robert Macfarlane, Rosemary Sutcliff, or Ali Smith book. XD

Tagging a couple of people from my recent activity: @fromunderdreamingspires @lizziestudieshistory @sleepanon @mindovermxtter (only if you want to!)

#about me #my vibe is ships; Romantics; and non-fiction #I also don't watch a lot of movies #(and yes I simply HAD to squeeze in Moby Dick somewhere)#XD #not research

Trending Blogs

Last Seen Blogs

How to PhD?