#why am i so slow at reading comprehension while reviewing. i thought i'm good at that shit.

[sylhea-raemi]

Thinking about how i won't be able to get other foreigners after summer abby or clytie it's making me sad already

[danielforshort]

Back at work now that the holiday season is over. I'm returning to my fall semester project. A small part of me (the scared part of me) wanted to give up on this project forever. This is the one that I spent an entire semester on and "failed" at. But the brave part of me was eager to try again.

I'm starting out by reviewing the last things I did for the project. I'm also focusing on a better organization system for my progress, notes, timeline, and scripting drafts. I was so overwhelmed by the project and my disorganization fed into that. I read some papers about neuroimaging and data organization ("Best practices in data analysis and sharing in neuroimaging using MRI" was a great read). I also set up a OneDrive folder with some sub-folders and documents to track my goals and daily progress. I think that will really help me stay on track.

I'm also reminding myself how cool I find the topic (functional connectivity in the putamen with an autistic population). I love the putamen. I love the basal ganglia (BG) as a whole actually; I have a very rudimentary slidedeck titled "My Love Letter to the Basal Ganglia" and I did my master's project on the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens! I think one of the reasons I love it so much is because I see so much of my own neurodivergent behaviors in the dysfunction of the basal ganglia. Also, I think repetitive motor behaviors (stimming) are a huge under-researched portion of autistic research, and god, can you imagine what we might learn if we focused on the existence of RMB as healthy behaviors and how gender identity and sex assigned at birth might affect RMB and how that might be seen in the BG?

Any time I start to write, think, or talk about why I love the BG I get excited about this project! And sometimes the big gloomy cloud of imposter syndrome and fear of failure cover up my excitement, especially when I am struggling so much.

I spent a couple hours today fussing with my MatLab script. I didn't make any "aha it works!" progress, but I did get familiar with the error messages and the set up I wrote in the fall. I think that is good and important to do!

I'm so used to being competent or skilled, that the unfamiliar sensation of being unskilled and not having a great foundation to start and very little structure direction of how to progress, make it hard to work on this project. I'm going to hold tight to my excitement and also learn how to loosen my grip on the fear of failing.

Alongside getting back to this project, our big lab project is also starting to pick up a bit more momentum, At first we had heard some rough dates to start data collection September and now we're hearing it could be as late as February. It's a bit frustrating but I'm so grateful to the experience of seeing a giant project in its infancy. The slow starts, little hiccups, big issues that need quick responses, are an experience that I wasn't expecting, but I sense will be valuable to have as I work my way through academia.

In the back of my mind I've begun to worry a little about my comprehensive exams, my dissertation, what job I even want after I graduate, and my long-term goals of moving to Europe. I shouldn't borrow this anxiety from the future though, so I'll try to let this settle for a while.

I hope that there are other PhD students who I can connect with on Tumblr, or that my thoughts and experiences bring some sort of comfort to other students. I want to let people know that I am a queer, disabled, Autistic, person of color, succeeding in a PhD program. There are many barriers to grad school and holding any marginalized identity compounds those barriers. But that shouldn't stop us from our goals. I am going to thrive and kick ass in my PhD program.