#thinking there

[learning-to-think]

Alright, I have quieted a little my anxiety over "oh but what am I gonna do after my master's!!!". It's been brought to my attention that I won't have anything to do "after my master's" if I don't "have the master's" first. So, back to my studies and my current thesis!

[learning-to-think]

Some of my mum's cousins were home this afternoon, and when I said I had a paper due on the situation of Swedish in Finland, I was met with puzzlement and 0 curiosity.

And it's made me soooo grateful of my usual environment of wonderful curiosity. At uni, with the people I connect with, or with my friends, when I say what I study, or when they bring up their point of interests, if one doesn't know anything about it, we usually go about it with the understanding that it must be interesting, if you're studying it, so go on, tell me about it and how it's interesting! and damn that's not the vibe in my family.

[learning-to-think]

Uni was able to lend me a laptop so I'm back to feeling adequately equipped to meet my deadlines!

I have 2 corpora extracts (roughly 500 occurrences) to annotate and an annotating guide to write by tomorrow, an oral on Friday, a paper to write by Sunday. Oh and I've got an exam on Monday, so I've got to review my vocabulary by then, but that's different.

[learning-to-think]

Sundays are my weekly "day off" regarding uni, even if I took another day off during the week. I tidied my room a little.

On Monday I had a class, so I went to class. Barely made any progress on the paper.

Today I worked much more on it.

What's highlighted is written out. What is not highlighted is what's left to change. So I'm nearly there, but frustrated with how slow I'm going. Even if I know my slowness is due to starting a new treatment.

[learning-to-think]

Recently I've agonised over "what even is the point of all this" so here's my reminder of what the point is, for me:

I am doing a master's degree for fun. Because I like linguistics, and being in a place where research and especially linguistics are valued and talked about makes me happy.

I am working on a master's thesis because that's how I'll learn how research works, how to write about the research I've done in a way that other people (and me three weeks later) will understand, which are really good skills to have, especially if I stay in academia after the master's!

And back to the first point, being happy is the point of everything. It might not feel useful or anything, and some would argue not everything needs to be useful, but also. also it's the whole point—for me. I want to be happy. I want as many people as possible to be happy. And if we're sad and depressed, we can't fight back for a better life. So being happy is the point of everything and anything. I'll be happy, because I won't let them win. I'll do a master's degree in linguistics on the main, and fight fascism on the low.

[learning-to-think]

I've been working on my thesis but every time I look at my little tasks and I pick the one I dislike the least, I do it, and then I'm like "oh woe me" because the tasks left after that? I like them even less! and it's only going down after that!!

It's the little things of rewriting a sentence, reworking a paragraph, adding an example, adding a definition, checking the source. Utterly bothersome to me at the moment. I want to read stuff!! and write about new stuff!! not rewrite the same paragraphs about the same book I've been reading for a year.

[learning-to-think]

Sick as hell. Staying home while my family is gathering at my great grandma's place. I don't want to be on a screen all day, so I picked a few short books... Let's see how much I can read before my brain gives up!