In the aftermath of my decision to quit grad school, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and seeking out advice. I called Julie from Escape the Ivory Tower, and we talked about whether it was possible to write a thesis alone, and my fear that if I switched schools I would just fail again, […]
I wrote the post Being Human at around 5am having stayed up most of the night to get my edits in for the deadline. I don’t normally work like that – I think I forgot to tell my co-supervisor I was in the UK. Oh well. I never really made it off Canadian time whilst […]
To mark my 4 week anniversary in Kitchener, I didn’t have a party (as suggested by AY), I instead had a week long crisis. I think AY had the better idea… It was a number of things. Moving. Change. The stress and difficulty of dealing with the appalling Goodlife (there’s some deep irony in that […]
Image via Katie Weilbacher It is a truth universally acknowledged that graduate school will take over your life, if you let it. The trick is not to let it, but if that were easy the biggest drug expense for student insurance would not be anti-depressants (I have it on good authority that this is the […]
Back in March, I had a really terrible week. My paper got rejected and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish this semester, and the following day, my boyfriend and I broke up. It’s not uncommon for a paper to be rejected, however, frustratingly, the comments I got were mostly aspects of […]
On Monday, I took what will be my last exam for the foreseeable future. I remember things best when I write them down, so I went through the course notes and typed all the key points into a document. I was going to hand-write it (better retention) but I started and my hand started cramping […]
My friend called me earlier today, to tell me he’d got 19/20 for a presentation he gave last week. He called me because I’d spent an evening going over it with him, helping him work out what his message was. I’m pleased with what we did – we took something that I knew very little […]
I think how you choose to spend your free time says a lot about you. Some people train for a triathlon, some people play video games, some people watch excessive amounts of TV. I knew a guy who seemed to think he could live life vicariously through the characters of TV shows. That made me […]
There’s an exercise in 7 Habits where you have to list your different “roles” and things you need to do for each of them. Here are mine (in no particular order): Grad student Teaching Assistant Ski instructor President of WISE Job seeker Girlfriend Daughter Friend Skier Kickboxer Workshop creator Programmer Nice (i.e. helping other people) […]
I read this great article on Study Hacks recently, it’s called Beyond Passion: The Science of Loving What You Do and is part of a series he’s doing. In one, he was looking for people who love what they do and I marked it to come back to because that’s me – I love what […]