December 30, 2022
Choosing a Dissertation Committee
I’ve been asked a few times about how I chose my dissertation committee, mostly by friends who are currently going through the process themselves. Personally, forming my committee just seemed to happen. The choices I made felt natural and effortless (in contrast to most things in graduate school, ha). But
December 28, 2022
Feedback, Again: Dissertation Proposal Edition
Reflecting on my dissertation proposal, the one topic I had to write about was feedback. I first wrote about feedback in my first year of graduate school. That post was my way of trying to figure out why the feedback I was getting in grad school, on class assignments and
December 20, 2022
Dissertation Proposal Defense: How It Went
December 2, 2022, 11:50 am Tapping my feet nervously, I’m sitting at my home “office,” which is just my dining room table with my laptop and a second monitor. My wi-fi has been spotty lately, so I have an ethernet cord stretched halfway across the room, probably a safety hazard.
November 21, 2022
Coping (Club Q)
We have mass shootings in America all the time. But it hits and hurts differently, intensely, when your hometown is the one that has become a hashtag, and one of your identities, a target again. I am coping by having a coffee with milk and sugar and fake whipped cream.
May 4, 2022
PhD, Semester 8: It’s Been a Lot
In February 2020, I wrote a post titled “PhD, Semester 4: An Inventory of Exhaustion.” It was a very long post about being tired. I guess I needed to think and write through this exhaustion, make sense of why I was so drained. Today, in May 2022, I’ve just wrapped
December 30, 2021
Qualifying Exams III: How-to (The Advice Post)
At one point, I decided not to write an advice post on quals. People seemed to have wildly different experiences. I didn’t think I could present my experience as typical; does a “typical” quals experience even exist? I’d also received advice that just didn’t work for me; maybe my advice