#i'm working on my master's thesis

[nevermindigotthis]

Do you ever look at a word you just wrote, a word that is in common use and that you've read and written countless times before, and just go "this looks wrong." and then have a mini existential crisis because that's not a word, that's just some random letters and sounds and oh god, all language is just random letters and sounds and why do these specific letters and sounds mean this specific thing and what am I even doing and

and then you just go back to writing like a normal person?

[garagepanic]

one path among so many others

[ante--meridiem]

Got an assessment back from one of my applications and while I still don't know if they'll actually pick me or not it is a relief to have formal confirmation that my applications aren't considered embarrassingly bad.

[isbergillustration]

Some character doodles from three of the different stories I'm writing as procrastination from actually writing much.

[pochapal]

girl who is getting a bad grade in phd (my personal development review is marked as "incomplete" after i didn't attend any skills training courses because if i ever didn't know something i needed to know i just opted to figure it out myself instead of admitting weakness and confessing to people in authority that there is even a single gap in my skillset [i also don't believe you actually need any training in how to write a novel and a thesis] {this is not hubris})

[chodzacaparodia]

I just finished the last chapter of my fic that I've been working on for over a year.

Is this how a mother feels when her child has grown up and left home?

[thatmintleaf]

I have yet to read all the bibliography for the the general assets so no subsections yet but man, It's starting to look like a decent thesis. I think. I hope. It' my bachelor thesis I never wrote one before

Title is "Reconstruction of vertical movements in South-Eastern Mediterranean: implications on the Messinian Salinity Crisis"

[aroacehanzawa]

wild how earlier in my studies i would look at people writing their thesis like some grand epic undertaking for super professional adults, and now when i have to start doing my own masters thesis it's like. this is homework. i have to do homework. except it's just the same thing every day

[newt-and-salamander]

Okay, time to go and overshare online because that's a very healthy coping mechanism and also impeccable internet safety.

Soooo, I had this job as a student assistant for 2.5 years. I worked for a professor (lets call him Mr. J.) and we got along quite well and I am very sure I carried out my tasks very efficiently and well. He repeatedly told me so.

Last year in January I received an offer as a student assistant for a different project (with Mrs. S), and also a different Professor (Mrs. Y) asked me if I would be interested to be her PhD student after I finished my degree. I was overjoyed because I was extremely interested in Mrs. Y's work and had meant to ask her myself but couldn't muster the courage. As Mrs. S worked in the same field, it was clear I would take her job as well.

So I talked to Mr. J and told him I would take a second job and I would need to lower my work load with him from 40 h/month to 30. He was ... not happy. I remember him literally saying "If Y wants to throw her hat into the ring, who am I to stop her", and in what I considered to be honest career advice, he told me not to go into her field as it was not very promising for a university career atm.

Fast-forward to June: It became clear to me that I wouldn't be able to work 60 h/month while writing my Master thesis starting in September, so I went to Mr J. and told him I would need to quit in autumn. It made sense, because the project I worked on with S was very much adjacent to the topic I chose for my thesis. Again, J was not overjoyed to hear this and told me it was "hard to find good people", but I took that as a compliment.

I finished all my tasks in time and I spent several hours in September showing my successor how to take over from me.

I then wrote a long email to J, thanking him for the 2.5 years we had worked together and everything he had taught me - because it was true, he had been a good boss and I had learned a lot and I knew he had made sure to give me interesting tasks. He had even sent me to a work trip to Paris to do some research in some archives there. I appreciated that a lot and I told him (and I had told him before), and wroteI regretted that I had to leave the job, but that I had had a great time. I also asked him if he could write me a employer's reference as it was pretty much my first proper job.

I didn't expect a bouquet of flowers or anything, but I thought he might write back with something like "thanks for your work, good luck with your thesis". All I got back then was a one liner saying he would write the reference.

I already had the feeling back then that he was sulking, but I brushed the thought away as him being very busy. I met him once on the corridor since then, where he very obviously had no time for me. And today I got the employer's reference, 3 months after I had asked him to write one.

It was a generic text about the university, then a list of my tasks which I provided and then 2 paragraphs, of which the first one said also the very generic things about my work behaviour, including 2 typos, and the whole second paragraph was dedicated to how I quit the job because I got another attractive offer and how he regrettet to let me go.

And ... I get it. These things are always very gerenic and maybe I'm reading too much into it. But tbh reading this, I feel very bad, because I think the only effort he put into it was to make sure I knew he was not happy about me leaving, and also this sounds like I left on a whim, while I told him 4 months prior. I am also very disappointed because he never once said thank you or good bye to me, and - as a person who is generally not very sure of herself - I think this letter understates my actual performance. All the time I thought I was overinterpreting his behaviour, but now I think it's safe to say that he's offended. And I don't understand why. I was only his student assistant. I think I did my job very reliably, but at the end of the day it still was scanning books for his seminars and going to archives to take photos of documents for him. I did not betray him in any personal way. I don't see why he would react in such a way. (And I can't stop thinking about the "throwing the hat into the ring" comment. If he felt I should in any way be more loyal (???) to him and IF he had maybe thought of offering me a PhD position, he could have done it then and there. I can't read his thoughts. I am suffering from impostor syndrom anyway, I don't think anyone would willingly want to take me on for a doctorate.)

Anyway, I'm confused and hurt and I wrote him an email asking very nicely to correct the typos. Let's see if that takes him 3 more months.

[meii-jasmine]

Hiiii! I've been a lot more active in my side blog for my webcomic, "Heliosphere: Under the Sky". (@heliosphere-underthesky)

Please check it out! It's all about personified space objects ranging from planets, stars, black holes, and more!

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

What frustrates me about Keeley's season 3 arc is that it wouldn't have to change that much to give her some satisfying character development that addressed her established flaws. Keeley's main problem, I think, is inertia: while she's perfectly capable of identifying what she wants, she's not great at actually doing anything about it. She can tell Rebecca that she's frustrated with Jamie refusing to take responsibility for anything — and with the kind of relationship she has with 23-year-old footballers in general — and she can tell basically everyone at Richmond that she feels smothered by Roy, but she doesn't address it with either of them until she either explodes or is pushed to do so. Similarly, while I don't necessarily get the impression that Keeley disliked being a model, she was clearly ready to move on from that stage of her life and seemed to have some career ambitions, given how excited she was to be offered her own PR firm — but these were opportunities she was offered, not ones she chose to pursue on her own initiative.

At the start of season 3, she's newly in a career that both plays to her strengths — her natural talent for the PR side of things — and exposes her weaknesses: she's still quite non-confrontational and has a lot of self-doubt, which makes it difficult for her to be an effective boss. So, change 1: they should have kept Shandy around as a parallel to Rebecca offering Keeley a job in season 1, and because she forced Keeley to be firm both with Shandy, about the expectations of her role, and with Barbara, about respecting her decisions as the boss and not being classist. Once they finished sorting that out, I think the three of them would balance each other nicely. (Basically my vision is Kirk/Bones/Spock but with Keeley/Shandy/Barbara).

Change 2 is to have Keeley decide to stop accepting funds from Jack after 3x08 rather than have Jack cut her off — this would be the first time we see her make a major decision on the direction of her career on her own initiative, and it would show that she's moving past her established pattern of staying in unhealthy dynamics longer than she should, which is particularly relevant after her breakup with Roy almost certainly exacerbated her abandonment issues. I don't mind that Rebecca ended up being the one to fund KBPR, but they should have at least shown that Keeley was already working on a proposal for new investors — they could just have her practice her pitch on Rebecca and have Rebecca be like, "fantastic, I'm in." Basically, the same general plot but Keeley demonstrates agency this time.

[suallenparker]

Coming to you soon:

Philinda Fanfic: When in Vegas

RATING: T

SPOILER: Set some time after 2x07 “The Writing on the Wall”, but in a timeline where that event takes place shortly before Phil's fiftieth birthday. For plot reasons.

SUMMARY: The night before Phil's fiftieth birthday, Melinda and he go for a drink. The next morning, they wake up engaged.

[ante--meridiem]

Life is so good when you've dropped a course.

[queersolarpunk]

just a happy lil rant

[akaessi]

what are you doing tomorrow? thesis

what about Thursday? thesis

what about—I'm going to stop you right there, I'm only ever 'doing thesis'

[witchmd13]

...