apollo's daughter

04.05.2022

"Today’s goals: Coffee and kindness. Maybe two coffees, and then kindness.” - Nanae Hoffman

Haven’t updated in a while, but I’m still studying hard. My tutor and I spent a couple sessions reviewing the tenses, post-positions, plural and oblique forms, how to form questions, imperative sentences, negations, and other beginner topics. Now I’m learning the subjunctive. He’s very happy with my progress so far and I’m pretty proud of myself, too.

20.11.2021

69/110 days of productivity

14.10.21

08.07.2021

“Know that you can start late, look different, be uncertain and still succeed.” -Misty Copeland

Request: Paris, dark academia.

HOW I PLAN MY WEEK AS A PHD STUDENT

I found the lack of structure and timetabled events the most difficult adjustment to make when I started my PhD last month. I love structure and I love routine, being without one made me panic quite a bit. One thing that has helped with this adjustment is planning my weeks using Google Calendar.

I have 5 separate calendars:

DAILY

This is the calendar I use to schedule mundane events and tasks that happen on a daily basis. At the minute, this just consists of scheduling in a lunch hour and taking my meds.

PERSONAL

My personal calendar is used for significant events in my personal life that have been planned weeks in advance and shouldn't be missed unless there's an emergency. As you can see, this week I had an appointment for my eyelash extensions and I also have a gig on Saturday. I have the alerts for this calendar switched on so I never forget when I have something important coming up.

PHD

This calendar is used to mark important milestones and events relating to my PhD. This includes mandatory lectures (I only have 3 this semester, and 2 have already passed!), meetings with my supervisors and academic advisor and deadlines.

TO-DO

My to-do calendar is the one that gets used the most regularly. Instead of writing a to-do list, I put the things that have to be done into my calendar with an allotted amount of time. If I know how I want to spend my week, I can do this on a Monday morning and other times I'll do it on a day-to-day basis. This week I know there's certain things I need to do while they're still fresh in mind and so I've already filled them in. Before using this method, I'd find that a to-do list is way too flexible for the way my mind works and I'd spend hours on a task that only really should've taken 30 minutes. I find that my time blocking my to-do list, the things on the list actually get done and I'm more productive with my time

WORK

My last calendar is for work. At the moment, I teach at the university, I tutor high school maths and I am also a specialist mental health mentor and counsellor. All of the hours I spend working are put into my work calendar so it's easy to keep track of my hours worked and, in turn, my expected pay every month.