#phd graduate school

[legogradstudent]

Collaborating on a project with several colleagues, the grad student is unable to identify exactly what he is contributing.

[meandtheveggies]

back to school 🍎

[alexistudies]

monday, march 11th 2024

spring break came and went in the blink of an eye, but it was lots of fun! met up with friends from HS, went to disneyland, and spent time with my family. I also still did some work over break that was time sensitive, but I can't really complain :)

its officially past the halfway point of the semester and i can see the finish line. ahhhh. i also realize i need to start studying more for my classes because things are getting more complex... BUT WE WILL SURVIVE

follow my studygram if you want a more frequent, up close in my daily academic life - IG: lexthephdstudent

[mvffinhamster]

I’M SORRY BUT CHARLIE SLIMECICLE ????

he’s always been fine but he’s evolving like a pokémon…

starting here: nerdy guy with big smile (so cute smile)

and suddenly he takes off his glasses…

and that’s okay, we’ve seen him without his glasses it’s okay, the messy hair is a bonus

BUT THEN???

SUDDENLY HE GRADUATED GAY HIGH SCHOOL

AND FUCKING GAY COLLEGE

EXCUSE ME ???? i am dead, i am actually 100% fucking dead

HE IS TOO HOT FOR HIS OWN GOOD

[bedlamsbard]

I HAVE SUBMITTED MY DISSERTATION.

[honeesblog]

a lot of people in my program really only do their studies and to my other PHD's I urge you: make sure you have other things going on! I have a near endless list of weird hobbies and sports and other interests and I just want you to know that you don't need to eat, sleep, and breathe only your topic and subject! Read a fiction book for fun, paint something badly, find a nice shop to browse in, go for a walk in a green area, take a break and don't rush through it. Pleasure and relaxation are valuable and worth your time. The point of a PhD/Masters is not to work in a hard and unsustainable way until you are done but instead to learn how to be an academic, what type of academic you are, and how you want to live your life/balance your academics and everything else!

When you are studying/working, don't be afraid of being wrong or doing things messily or poorly. On hard days, give yourself leeway, add an extra scoop of sugar to your coffee or tea, and listen to the rocky theme!

[jevilowo]

ODDLY SPECIFIC ENGIE HEADCANON

As a wee egg-yet-to-crack child, Engie was hideously socially inept. This comes with autism being a Conagher Family Heirloom™ (someone said that in a reblog once and it has lived in my mind since).

Alas, being socially inept and a "girl" in early 1930s small-town Texas was Not It, and so every evening for a year Engie's mother sat down with him for a couple hours to go through Social Ettequite, even though he would really rather have spent the time tinkering in Fred's workshop.

This had the opposite effect as intended. To this day, Engie is the image of a Polite Southern Man to a genuinely creepy extent. Every polite smile of his is the smile of a barely restrained madman, and his eyes... you've probably seen the "meet the engineer without goggles" video. Every handshake and kind word comes across as carefully calculated (because they are) and almost uncanny valley.

And of course theres the fact that no amount of social conditioning can disguise the fact he's deranged, which is the other Conagher Family Heirloom™ .

[mearcatsreturns]

I have a bookstagram, and I recently followed someone because they posted about the overconsumption issue that most bookish social media seems to have. Today, though, they posted another controversial "opinion": that listening to audiobooks isn't reading, and people who claim to have read a bunch of books that they listened to as audiobooks are lying and/or deluded. Listening to audiobooks, she said, is just consuming books.

I disagreed in a fairly politely worded reply, and I intend to unfollow/block, because I find it unlikely this person will change their mind, especially since I'm far from the only person to point out that this is exclusionary and ableist. But this is tumblr/my house, and now I'm going to be as blunt as I want to be.

I'm a librarian and archivist. So much of the work I and others in my field do focuses on making books and reading more accessible and less exclusionary. It is, in fact, incredibly ableist to negate how important audiobooks are for people who have certain disabilities or challenges, and I would in no universe say they aren’t reading. For that matter, a busy person who only has time for audiobooks and for people who just prefer them--it still counts, as far as I'm concerned.

See, there's a difference between an audiobook and a podcast or long song or radio program. An audiobook is still a book--it was written with a particular narrative structure, and the author plays a defined but limited role (once the book is written, it's written; the author isn't tuning in next episode with comments and corrections based on what listeners said). An audiobook is a book, ergo, listening to one is reading. Using braille is reading, and listening to audiobooks is reading.

The part that has me in full Captain Raymond Holt "apparently that is a trigger for me" mode is that this bookstagrammer called listening to audiobooks consumption. In the context of her other posts about overconsumption as an issue in the bookish community (again, agree, but also...mind your own business), this seems particularly insidious to me. Conflating influencer-driven (and capitalist hellscape) consumption with listening to an audiobook (again, a massive boon for the visually impaired and those with disabilities like ADHD, dyslexia, etc.) is rude at best and dangerously exclusionary at worst. Stop letting comparison be the thief of joy; mind your own business and stop looking at the pages that bother you. Focus on the kindness of leaning towards inclusion, meeting people where they are, and leaving judgment behind.*

*This person also said "feel free to comment if you disagree but please don't be mean or judgmental," as if they hadn't just posted the most ableist and judgmental sludge I've seen today.

tl;dr: don’t be a gatekeeping shithead, mind your own business, and

(gif by matalyn on tenor, couldn't find on tumblr)

[foosa17]

Trying to do comps while traveling is difficult, but having some really great reads makes it easier.

[legogradstudent]

Preparing to step out of his apartment, the grad student hesitates for an uncomfortable length of time.

[communistkenobi]

there are valid reasons to have an antagonistic relationship to academic scholarship, but those reasons are overwhelmingly not raised in graduate classrooms, where students instead bitch about theory in general, jargon in general, making them sound ultimately like conservatives, who view any attempt to systematically account for social phenomena as a form of useless intellectual degeneracy

[alexistudies]

monday, april 22nd 2024

happy earth day! this morning, i broke the ice on working on my first IRB form. i feel like this is such a big kid step in the PhD world, it's very exciting. hoping to get a good chunk of it done before friday and i'll probably need more help from my PI than i originally expected on it but that's okay :)

the past weekend was a great balancing act of adulting, relaxing, and academia. had a study date with a friend at the library for neural engineering, went to the pool, had date night w the boyf, and also went for a run with the pup. and i finished 2 library books (praise the LORD)

[collegecoffeeandcuriosities]

Summer time for a grad student? More like 3 months of intensive research. Excitingly, this is for my dissertation development phase!

If any of you fellow qualitative researchers out there have recommendations for survey and interview development articles or books, PLEASE pass them on!!!

[posallys]

i think you're such an interesting person. how do all of your professors just know you?

i go to a VERRYYYY small school. i think there are only 4,000 undergrads; the biggest class at the university is like the one intro biology class because everyone has to take a lab science and everyone thinks bio is the easiest, and that has ~70 students a semester. most of my classes are 25 ish people, and the biggest class I've been in excluding the intro science courses was 35 in my microbiology class last semester. i sit up front and I make an effort to talk to my professors, and it's definitely working in my favor ❤️ but like. small school = everyone knows everyone, and it is MUCH easier to stand out as a good student in a lecture of 25 people, or even 70 people, than it is in a lecture of 400.

[dynamicity-keysmash]

me when I have an 8am class

[notyetjaded1]

Wanting to post aesthetically pleasing studyblr content while having the bulk of my time dedicated to tasks (e.g., clinical work, early research, journal drafts) that cannot/should not/will not be posted on a public forum is an absolute joy. And I will find creative ways to keep myself motivated and accountable while trying to stay aesthetically interesting.