#study tracking

241215: Sunday — made a huge to-do list and got most of it checked off! Christmas tree is now up, and I did a little painting of "Midnight" from Doctor Who in my sketchbook.

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Woke up before 8, went to bed before 11. 💤

Read for more than 30 mins. Currently reading Touch by Courtney Maum. I must say, I don't really like it all that much. Maybe it gets better in the second half? 📖

Read a paper by Michael Barnett on the post-cold war evolution of humanitarianism:

Barnett, M. (2005). Humanitarianism transformed. Perspectives on Politics, 3(4), 723-740. http://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592705050401

Practiced piano—mostly Animenz arrangements. I want to work on his Swordland arrangement since I always gave up on it before, but now I think I can figure it out. ⚔️

Cleaned parts of the bathroom. 🧽

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Something I'm grateful for: all the Christmas decorations my boyfriend's family brought to us so that we could get the house all festive!! 🎄

Prompt: What is something you’d love to learn if you had the resources?

241216: Monday! Semi-productive morning (I baked! I never bake!) and work (piano lessons) in the evening.

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Woke up before 8, stayed up past 11pm finishing a book (I finished at 0:00 ON THE DOT. BTS would be proud). 🕛

(Obviously) read for far more than 30 mins. Touch by Courtney Maum... not for me. 2/5 stars. Characters were incredible, plot was aimless, and message was wishy-washy. 📕

Read a paper on space travel that was perhaps a bit too far outside of my specialty, but was interesting nonetheless:

Carbajales-Dale, M., & Murphy, T. W. (2023). The environmental and moral implications of human space travel. Science of The Total Environment, 856(2), 159222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159222

Practiced before bed, ironing out hard bits in some Animenz arrangements (this guy loves arpeggios). 🎹

Didn't tidy/clean any area in particular, though I did other chores. 🍞

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241214: Saturday; a day to rest after a long, busy semester! I started replaying Citizen Sleeper today, this game is beautifully done. So excited for the sequel!

Woke up a bit past 8am.

Read for 30mins. Also hit the library and got 3 books out!

Read an interesting paper on biases in pain judgements:

Schäfer, G., Prkachin, K. M., Kaseweter, K. A., & Williams, A. C. (2016). Health care providers' judgments in chronic pain: the influence of gender and trustworthiness. Pain, 157(8), 1618–1625. https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000536

Pulled out some old songs to play now that my gig is over! ≥30min.

Cleaned the rest of the floor in my room.

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Something I'm grateful for: a warm house and warm blankets and warm drinks! And a refrigerator. That's pretty cool too.

Prompt: What are three adjectives that are meaningful to you?

"Resolute" - I would like to be the type of person who knows what they want. I don't think I'm quite there yet, and that's okay—I need to see more of the world before I can make up my mind on things

"Mellifluous" - how I'm tryna be when I practice music. Just a great word, and one I associated with my boyfriend!

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241312: Today was incredibly busy, I had about two hours to myself in the morning and then I was gone until late in the night. My family helped me move my piano, and then we went for lunch. After that I taught piano until the evening and then met friends for drinks to celebrate the end of the semester! 🥂

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Goal progress:

I woke up nice and early, but went to bed after 11 because I had to finish some laundry. 🧺

I read for a little less than 30 mins—there just wasn't time, but I fit some in on the bus rides throughout the day. I've started re-reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Perilous Jouney, a childhood favourite. 🚸

I read a paper I've been meaning to get to awhile, since it keeps coming up in more recent papers:

Prkachin, K. M., & Solomon, P. E. (2008). The structure, reliability and validity of pain expression: Evidence from patients with shoulder pain. Pain, 139(2), 267–274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2008.04.010

I played piano & sang for at least 30 mins. I haven't sung for awhile, I think I strained my voice a bit lol 🎤

I took care of the mess of bags and laundry in front of my bed! I still need to deal with another mess on my room's floor... I'll get to it eventually. 🛏️

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Something I'm grateful for: Friends and mojitos! Yum! (To the latter) 🍹

Prompt: What show, book, or movie would you recommend to your younger self? (Something you wish you'd seen sooner!)

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Setting up goals for the next 12 days!

Wake up before 8am, go to bed before 11pm.

Read for at least 30min.

Read & take notes on one (entire) academic paper.

Practice an instrument for at least 30min.

Clean/organize a space (different each day).

Current progress:

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I really like using 合格ノート from the Japanese iOS store.

Pros:

-it’s free-it’s in 100% Japanese

-you can track your study over months, setting goals and there are built in graphing functions. 

-daily motivations in Japanese to keep you focused.

-daily stamp if you meet your study target and a daruma that grows as you level up through hitting study goals.

-you can connect with other people studying through a chat/forum feature

-built in ‘to do list’ function

-it’s pretty easy to use

Cons:

-it’s in 100% Japanese

-the timer can run the battery down, I prefer to just make a note of my start and finish times in the iOS Notes app instead as this avoids the battery issue. 

-it displays hours in decimalised fractions instead of hours and minutes on the calendar view, but daily views show minutes, so it’s not a big deal.