#phd woes

[annadeedee]

reading Frankenstein for the first time, and Victor is just. "If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then the study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind" he says, and then carries on doing it anyway. Intense Phd student energy. Self-awarely taking psychic damage for years, because Someone has to create the monster. The monster can't just stay uncreated. Right? That would be healthy, and we can't have that.

[lesbian-mulder]

…

[alxina]

I just realised that I only have to write 40k words and then I'll be free from PhD hell forever. Out of which I have 5k written already and then it's 35k left, and the MATH NEVER LIES.

For context: 40k words in academic writing is roughly equivalent to 100k words in creative writing.

It'll pass.

Hopefully.

[psicygni]

Did you ever feel disillusioned while you were getting your degree?

Did I ever not? Yes, I think that's a very common feeling in academia, especially in a doctoral program when you get a real look behind the curtain at what higher ed is truly like and begin to imagine your own future among department politics and races for tenure and publish or perish. You also get faced with the fact that PhD programs are simply vocational degrees to become a researcher and it isn't anything more special than that, along with a delightful mix of just how much busy work exists on the pathway to your doctorate and how little of it actually matters. Add in the systemic racism, misogyny, and other social ills, it's an easy realization that perhaps getting this degree is not an actual ideal use of these many years of your life and you could be doing so much else to truly make a difference in the world.

I spent a considerable amount of time laying on the floor, deciding whether or not to drop out.

[figues]

the sheer panic when when you realise you’ve mixed up june and july in your head and you’ve been working on the wrong thing for more than a week

[afrofuturiststudent]

27/10/19: woke up early (for me) and did some writing for a talk later this week. Keeping up with everything this month has been difficult for many reasons and I can't wait for things to quieten down

[queerypie]

ugh im having a bad couple of days and i wanna cancel plans but also im becoming that weird girl that people see once every three weeks

[annadeedee]

hi, explain to me in the most tumblr way what you’re doing your PhD on

heyy yeah sorry we embedded your boyfriend into a group in a way that doesn't respect his metric. no, we don't yet know how to describe him in terms of dehn twists. we may have stretched some bits of him exponentially? um, yeah. sorry.