#thesis data

[bizarrelittlemew]

what people think being a phd student is like: groundbreaking research, cute academia outfits, lively classroom discussions during teaching, inspiring conferences, writing your thesis in film-worthy libraries and cute coffee shops

what being a phd student is actually like: imposter syndrome, forgetting that you even own nice clothes because you never use them, ending up on 3-4 more daily medications than when you started, trying to make your extremely niche research topic sound impactful on funding applications and getting rejected anyway, searching through 5 different calendars for a 25-minute window where all your supervisors can be there (2 of them won't make it anyway), doing multiple other projects before actually getting to the ones your thesis is about (at least you get your name on papers, which leads us to:), the whole soul-crushing publishing process, getting your patience tested by students who don't prepare for classes at all (but expect you to summarize and explain 3-4 lectures of stuff to them in 5 minutes during a hands-on tutorial), writing your thesis and putting together an assessment committee last minute, starting to feel nausea at the word "networking", experiencing levels of burnout you didn't know existed, university bureaucracy slowly but surely draining your will to live

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[erbiumspectrum]

Uni is so crazy, I just came up to my friend with a thesis work update and said, "Good news! I screwed up the calculations!" unironically

[iamthepulta]

There is a woodpecker hammering at the side of the house and it's a bold take for 10:30 am, bird.

[nguyetdahuong]

I mean, if Sam Winchester could still consult the lore after 95 concussions, then maybe I could still write this crap

[waitineedaname]

I finally defended my thesis proposal!!!!!!!

[mgu-h]

i've been thinking a lot about nortrell these past few days, and in consideration of why i find it so compelling, i've realized that its discovery followed a familiar spiral for me. i always fall in love with a character that a lot of fan media portrays as a sub and a bottom (i LOVE subby bottoms) and then i get obsessed with him and start studying his lore and discovering all the ways he's complex and competent, adding critical nuance to the existing framework from the beloved archetype.

inevitably in that process i discover that he's got a weirdly codependent long-time best friend hovering in the background, who's also an employee or something subordinate, and who has the energy of someone who wants nothing more than for that particular guy to top him, but would never say so out loud (i LOVE hopeless and helpless pining)!! like give me a slutty guy who has some kind of situational authority over his very best friend, and make that friend a pining, needy simp trying desperately to hide it, and i am fully seated. this has happened multiple times, to my surprise.

i think the reason i love it so much is that it's like two halves of a single person finally coming into alignment, with full intimate knowledge of each other, risking utter vulnerability to the person who can hurt you worst, which is like the discordant parts of my own self getting resolved. that's what i like in my ships and try to achieve in my stories, and nortrell is rich material for that. i just think it's the best when a guy (lando) seeing his friend (max) plausibly triggers a deep and complex emotion, which can best be verbalized like:

only with you, the other half of myself, can i be a fully realized version of myself; everyone in the world sees my weakness, but you alone see my strength; everyone sees my desire to please as if i'm offering myself to be taken, but you secretly wish it were me offering to take you and keep you; you crave my attention even as you watch me offer it to others, but i'd give it to you if i knew you wanted it; you alone make me feel safe, safe enough to be truly confident and free to assert myself, to take what i want, without being mocked for having the audacity to think i had the capacity to lead; you trust me to be control, and i crave that trust to know i'm worthy of being trusted; you want me differently than anyone else does, you know me more completely, and i need to posses you to remind myself who i am and matters most; i know you equally, as if you were an extension my very self; i see your weakness and want to offer you relief and comfort nobody else could; i've made you into my home and i want to play house and care for you like you're mine; i want to fall into your arms and come inside you, and have you hold me close enough to be certain that you're here, you're mine, and we're stable and complete as one.

it's not really typical romantic love as much as being fully entangled as one person, split in half into two. romance to me depends on mystery and the discovery of an other, but here there's no romance involved because you don't have to romance your own limbs, you know? they're already part of you, and you don't have to put in any effort to get to know someone who already knows you better than you know yourself. finally acknowledging that is a relief and resolution of uncertainty into wholeness as they fuck nasty about it, you know?

[noisytenant]

Being reminded once again that a lot of people have fucking sleeper cell agent triggers that make them instantly fail to see the human being in front of them, regardless of any personal history they have or any rapport. instantly, that person is an Enemy that cannot be reasoned with. Permanent fight or flight.

And that instead of this being seen as, you know, a rather maladaptive attitude to bring to your relationships that will permanently strip you of the capacity to experience full love and companionship, there is a dominant strain of thinking that this is a reasonable, righteous, moral good.

That a "boundary" looks like building an impenetrable wall that nobody can see but you; That conversation, negotiation, and collaboration aren't just avoided--They're treated with contempt. The very notion of trying to understand why another human being that you care about may suddenly act in an unpleasant or even monstrous way is spat upon and trampled underfoot. Complete abandonment is considered a first line of defense rather than a last resort.

I think we all need to do our best to get over this kind of thinking. And I don't mean that we should be push-overs; In actuality, moving away from this kind of rigid "boundary" often means advocating for yourself and fighting for what you think is right. I think we all deserve friends and allies who can compassionately challenge us when we adopt ways of thinking and behaving that hurt others without immediately assuming the worst.

[richardxoliverxmayhew]

//I did it... I did it everybody.... Sleepless nights and exhausting days of churning out data collection and codes from my thesis interview and research docs and I'm done (at least with the data collection, until after winter break) 🥹 everybody say 'good job little gremlin' in unison now 😩//

[pilgrimattinkercreek1974]

the thing about my stupid thesis is that i love my lesbian boss slash thesis advisor and ive been working on this project for two years and i care about it and find it interesting and theoretically this work as the basis for my chance to demonstrate what ive joyfully and enthusiastically learned across the last four years should be a rewarding exciting opportunity but i was overly ambitious with my thesis proposal and feel this constant pressure to be inventive and incisive due to my deliberately interdisciplinary training on top of regular old academic pressure and the impossibility of pleasing aforementioned lesbian boss thesis advisor and ive also invested such a personal emotional degree into it that criticism is kind of terrifying and unbearable and also i really dont know anything about statistics and then my shit got rocked by the fires effectively throwing everything in my system out of whack in ways i can barely identify

[iamthepulta]

Okay. I can do this. We persist.

- store

- shit in furnace

- essay (pipes)

- essay (thesis)

- compile Table

- wrangle undergrads and compel them to work on their portion of The Table

To keep my mind Pure we will begin calling The Thesis, The Table because it's funnier that way.

[sungjinhos]

the fact that i have to finish a bachelor degree and still work on a fucking thesis in the same period is making me slightly crazy not gonna lie

[hobimo]

ao3 getting scraped huh... would be a shame if I started posting incomprehensible fic to fuck with AI

[bubobubosibericus]

never ask a woman her weight or a grad student the size of their research folders (plural!).

[laceandsteelgirl]

LOOK AT MY FUCKING SWEETIE PEES