In December 2022, three months into my PhD, I dropped out. It was objectively the right decision, but that doesn’t mean that thinking about it isn’t painful. I had applied for my PhD at a time when life seemed if not simple, then like it was heading in the direction I wanted it to. I…
Category: Life and personal goals
Where are the Latin Books?
I’ve been exploring learning Latin. It’s going to be something I learn as part of my degree, but I wanted to get a head start as I know already that I’m likely to face some accessibility challenges once I reach that module. It is also several years away, and I am eager to learn and…
Pursuing the unseen: my quest to create tactile images
I fairly recently acquired a tactile image printer, sometimes known as a swell paper machine. Essentially, you print or draw onto a specific type of paper, then run it through a machine which heats it up. Darker lines will then be raised, creating a tactile image. Blind people experience so much image poverty. That is,…
You’ve got to reach out
I’ve taken the chance recently to reach out to a couple of people who I know are living in the area and ask if they’d like to meet up. Much to my surprise, they’ve both said yes. I also received a message from someone on my course asking if I’d like to go for a…
There’s no map for navigating loss
Earlier this week I received a call from Guide Dogs finalising the rehoming of Isla, my retired dog. In four days, she’ll have lived with her new family for two years, but various logistical things meant this process took longer than expected. It was a routine call and yet when I hung up all I…
Cry over your research and then get over it
Today I cried over a research proposal. Truly I am living the very glamorous life of a postgraduate student. The research proposal is for an applied project that I’m completing in place of a dissertation for my master’s degree, and when I received the feedback on it all I could do was cry. Truthfully it…
Academia. It’s a Mystery
One very exciting thing about being a postgraduate student is that I get to attend a lot of academic conferences. But I also know just enough to enable me to submit papers and presentations of my own. There are whole events designed to give postgraduate students this kind of experience, and I’m jumping at the…
Making sense of the chaos
I’ve somehow dragged myself through a really challenging few months, and although in many ways there have been some incredibly positive changes in my life, it hasn’t been easy. I started a postgraduate course in January and I was extremely enthusiastic leading up to the start of the course. I would be studying something I…
It’s Okay to be My Authentic Self
I’ve been blogging for almost ten years. Writing that down feels a bit scary, especially because I’m not sure how much I have to show for it. I started this blog because I was a confused, unhappy seventeen-year-old. It was fuelled by teen angst and the need for other people to understand just what I…
I’m not sure any of us are ok, maybe all we can do is say it out loud
I keep a journal. Sometimes I write in it multiple times a day for weeks on end and then I don’t write at all for a month. But I keep it in some form. I’m sharing some of what I wrote in my journal today because even though it’s not happy or reassuring, maybe somehow…