#phdroutine

Today, I feel hopeful and excited.

I have been on a rollercoaster the past few weeks - with some big wins, confusion, pressure from every side, support from unexpected people, roaming directionless, and also good guidance. It was such a mixed feeling - being not able to celebrate my wins, trying not to get too excited, and at the same time working to make that dream true.

I know I am being cryptic but bear with me. I have something big coming up and you guys will be first to know when it actually happens. ❤️

Right now I am preparing for that Big Thing, and building my reading/writing habit is the first thing I am doing. Reading journal articles is such a soothing activity for me and it also gets my brain working. So I have chosen to do that first thing in the morning, every day.

The night before, I select an article to read in the morning and I try to finish the AIC - Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion - within my one-and-a-half-hour reading time. If that paper is interesting and if it looks relevant to my study, I will bookmark it and spend more time on it. And because of that, I won't be able to read one paper every day (which is actually the goal). But, no perfectionism. Go with the flow. Right?

okay, dear diary, the first two months behind my back, now I just started to chill out and miss my academic appointments (that’s not true)

I spent my October under the slogan derived from Allain Ginsberg (with slight modifications though). “I’ve seen the best research ideas of my generation destroyed by a brief literature search”. Howl as it should be raised nowadays in the university. This is to say, I am starting to prepare for my comprehensive exam and feel a bit frustrated by the amount of “I-should-have-written-this” and “I-should-have-read-this-before-writing-phd-proposal” articles and books. By the way, discovered several very useful research societies and publications, and thank god for Russian #dissercat that publishes bibliographies under free access. 

what else. This October I sent out my first international conference application (remains to be seen if it’s accepted), found a couple of workshops to participate in, spent way too much money on wine and booked a ticket to Prague. And at the same time I discovered my older colleagues from Sorbonne to make some career progress (Francesco edited the last issue of La Révolution française, and Paolo replaced Toby as Institute librarian, poor Toby). What can I say? We’ll see who’s gonna be ahorse in three years!