반스

not new to the community, but coming back from a rather long hiatus so here's a lil introduction ^^

i'm 26, currently pursuing a master's degree in data science (kinda?). i was diagnosed with adhd late last year and have been on a journey of self-discovery ever since trying to manage my symptoms and improve my quality of life, and that also includes my studies!

i'm currently in the process of writing my master's thesis, which i had to push back to the fall instead of this summer bc of my adhd </3 im still trying to find my rhythm atm and get better at coding in python. im hoping that by rejoining the studyblr community i'll be able to get back on track to still graduate this year!!

other than my master's degree, i am also a big language learning enthusiast. i'm bilingual - i speak romanian (native) and english (c1). i've dabbled in many languages, but i'm most comfortable with japanese (~N4). right now i am taking a break from japanese and will be focusing on studying korean. my goal for kr is to reach lower intermediate, so around a2/b1 (topik levels still confuse me sorry) by the end of this year.

finally im an intl student studying in the netherlands and i'm slowly working my way to gaining confidence in speaking dutch and improving my skills, so if youre a dutch speaker willing to help out learners hmu :')

my thesis meeting went pretty well even if i didn’t get everything i wanted to ready in time!!! on the other hand since i didn’t sleep well last night i didn’t get much done once i got home because i was too tired to :( i have a bit more energy now so here’s a short to do list

to do list

✅ anki korean flashcards

▢ read + take notes popularity bias research paper (30 min)

✅ prep work bag + breakfast for tomorrow

✅ dishes

✅ iron clothes

▢ take out trash

✅ read (for pleasure!)

🎵 listening to

the day is almost over, but there’s still a couple of things I want to get done. so here’s a lil evening’s to do list

to do list:

laundry

write 200 words draft from notes

thesis meeting prep for tomorrow

dishes

if anyone has any tips on how to use it for studying/what apps to get plspls let me know 🥺

I've been trying to increase my focus and reach ~4h of active studying/day. Some days are better, some days are worse. I thought making a little challenge out of it might help me stay motivated :)

The plan is to slowly increase the focus time week-by-week until i reach my goal, but let's take it one week at a time!

week 1: consistency

Goal: 2h of studying

The goal is to just show up and try to study for 2h. Best case scenario would be 2h of active studying, but any attempt at studying counts!

Since I'm focusing on learning Korean and working on my thesis (yes i'm still not done with it sigh) i'm going to split it into 1h for Korean and 1h of working on my thesis, to balance it out. For Korean I'll be counting any time spent with the language, including consuming content like variety shows or dramas. I'm not including listening to music, because i have a lot of kpop songs in my playlist so it would be difficult to track.

As for my thesis, since I'm in the literature review phase all studying time is more or less active atp.

I have a busy week and month ahead, so i am curious to see how it'll all go down.

my libby track record is truly atrocious. i have the tendency to borrow more books than i can realistically finish before my loans run out. case in point, i currently have nine (9) books sitting on my loans shelve and seven (7) books on hold, out of which four (4) are suspended.

in the spirit of ✨new year, new me✨ (and an attempt to stop doomscrolling), i want to start 2026 with no unread library books. i'm not sure if i can actually read all 9 books since i have some busy days coming up, but i'll try my best! as long as i can finish at least 3 books before january 1st i will be content.

here is the current situation:

"The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" by Grady Hendrix (audiobook, 14h) - read 21%, due in 21 days just renewed my loan for the third time

"The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler (audiobook, 6h) - not started, due in 6 days with 2 people waiting

"Crash Test" by Amy James - not started, due in 8 days with 1 person waiting

"Vanishing World" by Sayaka Murata - not started, due in 9 days

"More than a Glitch" by Meredith Broussard - read 13%, due in 13 days

"Python Machine Learning" by Ahmed Ph. Abbasi - read 8%, due in 13 days

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger - not started, due in 13 days

"A Winter's Promise" by Christelle Dabos (audiobook, 15h) - read 5%, due in 13 days

"Heated Rivalry" by Rachel Reid - not started, due in 18 days with 6 (!) people waiting

"Python Machine Learning" is probably the one book i will 99% not finish reading since i want to actually run the code from the book. that means i technically only have 8 books to finish in 12 days.

my current plan is to obviously tackle the ones that are due soonest and have other people waiting on them. which means i have 8 days to read "The Big Sleep" and "Crash Test" which sounds more than doable !!!!

i decided to try posting a weekly overview of all the ~productive~ tasks (i.e. mostly master's thesis or language learning related) i got done at the end of each week!

without further ado let's jump into the first one :)

japanese

started working my way through the N5 Game Gengo & the corek 2k/6k anki decks

listened to half of Sirup's interview on Tokyo Highway Radio with みの (afaik it's apple music exclusive, sorry spotify users

i only played it out of curiosity because i've been a fan of sirup for years now, but ended up being pleasantly surprised! tho my japanese isn't the best (plateaued ~N4), i was able to follow parts of the interview. while i did not know/understand every single word, i was able to piece together what they were talking about. the most interesting part from what i could understand was when sirup mentioned trying to emulate the feeling of english artists/songs while singing in japanese! i think he also said something about doing the same thing with korean on his track with zion.t but don't quote me on that

korean

completed L2 & started L3 for the online course i'm taking :)

also completed the extra homework for L2 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

did the first 2 lessons from Pimsleur Korean I

started doing my anki drills daily again

master's thesis

finished reading two academic papers

started going through my notes/highlights and rewriting them (the goal is to eventually combine all the notes and ideas on similar topics from each article into 'atomic-notes')