an-idiot-in-research - Tumblr blog

an-idiot-in-research · 19 days ago

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Live footage of me squeezing into a research gap

#feels like choosing a molehill as the hill i'm choosing to die on #phd #research #research memes #research problems #dissertation #academia

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an-idiot-in-research · 3 months ago

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"How's your research going along?"

"Which direction is it going in?"

Me:

#we're all going on a ride #phd #research #research memes #research problems #dissertation

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an-idiot-in-research · 7 months ago

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I would like to show you the sole photograph of my grandfather I have. I can't tell you the exact date, but it was most likely taken between 1942 and 1944. My grandfather joined the army as war was ramping up in Europe. To protect his home, his livelihood, everything he ever knew, from the scourge of fascism and the Nazi menace that was wrecking havoc across the continent and was threatening the shores of Britain.

I never met my grandfather. He died well before I was born. What I do know are stories passed down from my father. He saw action in the Battle of the Bulge (and was more than a little miffed when he read that the Americans got all the glory) and was en route to Berlin by late 1944. He spoke very little of his experiences in the war, but would open up during viewings of 'The World at War.' One story he told, passed down through my father, will stick with me to my last breath.

They were a few miles outside of Berlin in the last few months of the war. The infantry were ahead of the tanks, but a message was given from the infantry units. They were taking heavy fire from a school. And defending that school were boys. Members of the Hitler Youth. Some infantrymen were struggling to pull the triggers.

The youngest of those boys was estimated to be 10 years old. The oldest between 15 and 16.

The order was for the tanks to blow up the school from a distance.

So the tanks did.

The fascist regime threw anyone forwards for a dying cause. Because that's what they do in the end, when it becomes known their ideology, their beliefs, their laws is built on sand. It is all or nothing. These regimes are ultimately destructive. They hold no answers nor solutions. They lie that they do. They stir up hatred and fear. Because if you're scared, you will let the regime do whatever they want. Even send your son, your nephew, your grandson to die before they reach secondary school.

Those like my grandfather signed up to rid Nazism once and for all. He saw nightmareish things, how to do terrible things, with the belief that the next generations won't have to. Yet Nazism is on the rise again. It's back. People are increasingly swayed by the rhetoric of hate and division, so they look for the false prophets claiming to have the answers. I sincerely hope nobody else will have to be in the tank and firing shells at buildings with child soldiers, but it seems the world is heading down the same old path. To those who willingly vote for the politicians who spit lies and bile, I hope it is not your child that will end up with a gun in their hand. But it only happens to someone else or someone else's family. Until it doesn't. And you become that someone else.