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mak🗡️📖☕️ study motivation & books i'm reading ~2nd year phd student~ side blog🪻

[booksstudiesandteaa]

🪻 official intro post 🪻

~ hello! i'm currently a phd student in security studies. i used to study classics and i miss it dearly. i made this blog to meet other students and keep myself motivated. i've definitely hit a slump in my program and i'm trying to rediscover my interests. please say hi and send me a message :)

~ research interests:

feminist security/terrorism studies

women's studies

political extremism in the digital space

extremist subcultures

AI harms and deepfakes

radicalization processes and countering/preventing violent extremism (P/CVE)

~ personal interests:

20th century fantasy & sci fi

lord of the rings

black metal

nature and animals (i'm vegan!)

norse paganism and mythology

ancient greek and anglo saxon

i'd also love to start learning swedish this year!

[booksstudiesandteaa]

still working on my literature review! today i'm reading literature on emotions and decision-making.

i'm so excited for later this summer; i'm going on two beach trips with my cat and it'll be her first time at the beach! she's getting old so i want to bring her along on my travels a little more since she loves getting out.

[booksstudiesandteaa]

working on my crime mapping readings today! the topic is the criminology of place.

☕️~ tetley's tea with agave and soy milk. if caffeine didn't make me jumpy i'd have ten cups a day.

today is also the one year anniversary of fracturing my spine and it's pretty much completely healed, minus some stiffness in my shoulder muscles from standing or sitting weird. but i'm very grateful the injury wasn't worse and that i'm fine now!

[booksstudiesandteaa]

today was kind of not productive. idk it's been a weird week. sorry for posting so sporadically. tomorrow i need to email the prof overseeing my summer study to ask her to move the deadlines we set bc i cannot work to them for some reason.

anyway!! today i read about neuroscience for my dissertation and it's honestly boring. i miss history

[booksstudiesandteaa]

trying to work on my dissertation lit review today but i am too easily distracted lol. i recently got a bilingual edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and there is truly nothing i love more in life than bilingual books. i have recently been so fascinated by the huge differences between old english (particularly Beowulf) and middle english. germanic languages are so cool to me. anyway i'm trying to lock in and read about democracy and AI but i'd rather just read my other books.

[booksstudiesandteaa]

struggling to be productive today ugh

my goal for this afternoon is to finish my crime mapping readings and the discussion post. i also need to plan out a paper proposal to send to this prof in my department but i cannot for the life of me remember what we talked about for it lol

also i'm now a 2nd year phd student! i do not envy the incoming first years in the slightest; this past academic year has genuinely been hell on earth

[booksstudiesandteaa]

home visiting my mom for a few days! we saw the tiniest little hummingbird nest this morning <3

my summer semester started yesterday and i'm already overwhelmed lol. i read about 50 pages of the Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford yesterday and it's really drawing me towards reorienting my current research plan to focus more explicitly on ethics and ethical data collection.

[booksstudiesandteaa]

sorry for the prolonged absence, i finished my weekend from hell last week and then rotted for a while. i also had a beach day with my cohort!

my summer semester starts on wednesday so this break is short lived. this summer i'm taking an advanced crime mapping class and then an independent study course to work on my dissertation.

anyway i am back!

[booksstudiesandteaa]

okay guys i need to lock the fuck in this weekend. join me on the final sprint of the semester! i'll try to post regularly this weekend to update on my progress.

to do (by Monday):

-proofread and submit data replication paper

-write a literature review on audience cost theory (9-12 pages)

-finish redoing regressions and analysis section of term paper

-finish intro, conclusion, discussion, lit review, and theory section for term paper (20 pages - i'm going to have to cut down a lot)

-prepare policy brief presentation for monday morning

-make next week's schedule for my side job

[booksstudiesandteaa]

i'm back! sorry for not posting for a little while i've been in assignment and grading hell

today pushed me so far beyond my limits i don't know if i'll manage to get any work done tonight i'm so tapped out. i haven't had a single day off this semester minus a couple days over spring break ;-;

anyway! i have a final exam tomorrow and i really need to compile my notes for it. i also have been fighting with Stata the past week and i'm over it, i need to redo all of my regression tables tomorrow

[booksstudiesandteaa]

late night reading and notes by candlelight

my sleep has been so shit lately i genuinely have been trying to work by candles in the late evening to help my circadian rhythm (it works!)

[theprophetingrid]

Grad school is wild because you'll spend 5 straight months minding your own business and trying to fix a very specific problem, and then someone will come up to you one day and just drop the most feral departmental drama. What do you mean one professor probably murdered another? That girl you don't like is getting fired for drinking ultrapure lab water? There's a guy stealing toxic chemicals from other labs "to banish demons?" I'm over here trying to improve my standard deviation for months on end and across the hall there's a whole HBO show going on, apparently.

[booksstudiesandteaa]

i finished the outline for my literature review assignment and submitted it! next up is grading some undergrad papers tonight on propaganda (but first i need to go for a walk)

[booksstudiesandteaa]

this week has been really busy. i skipped class on thursday to work on my literature review outline that's due this Sunday for an elective i'm taking, and i shall continue to work on said outline today. i'm writing it on audience cost theory which is so insanely boring lol

also does anyone remember these sours candies?? i was so excited when i saw them at the store

this weekend i also desperately need to go grocery shopping and start grading undergraduate papers ;-;

[booksstudiesandteaa]

i actually got my original dataset to work in Stata!! i genuinely was so proud of myself last night because i really struggle with quantitative methods and statistics. fun fact about me, i had to take the SAT three times just to pass the math section lol

i also finally got some time to read the Dragon Reborn! i love The Wheel of Time series so much thus far.

[booksstudiesandteaa]

i've had such an unproductive weekend but at least my taxes are done ;-;

today i'm working on a summary paper, as well as a short critique paper on an assigned article for one of my state security classes!

i'm torn between wanting this semester to end and also needing five more weeks to get everything done lol

[booksstudiesandteaa]

took some notes at home (with assistance from my cat) and then wandered around the library for a bit today! i got sidetracked by the section on book collecting. i've got a couple of antique books published by Scribner's so i wonder if they're first editions!

i worked out my summer research schedule today too with one of my committee members! it's going to be a rough summer but i'm glad to finally start on my own research.

🎧 - Too Fast to Die by Archspire (new album <3)