Academia & Writing
For my M.A., seminary, Ph.D., and writing posts.
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My Second and Third Years of the Ph.D.: Running Out of Steam
A few years have passed since my last Ph.D. update, so I figure it’s time for one. Since then, I’ve jumped through a few more hoops of the program, and navigated extra demands outside of it. But what I’ve learned really comes down to this: almost nothing goes according to plan. And as time goes on, it becomes increasingly harder to separate the Ph.D. from the rest of my life. Let me explain. I’ll start where I left off. As expected, I finished my courses by Christmas of 2024. (Insert applause here.) But then—my supervisors recommended that I take another course for credit. This kind of uprooted my plans to…
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Rest In A World That Never Sleeps
In the midst of this busy season, here is a message on rest in general, not just Sabbath.
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What My First Year of My Ph.D. Taught Me
School is just around the corner. Maybe you're a student wanting to do a Ph.D., or maybe you want to know what a Ph.D. student does. Either way, this is the right place to be.
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How To Stop Fear of Public Speaking from Stopping You
If you know the discomfort of having a room/auditorium full of eyes on you at once, and want to stop wishing for the floor to swallow you whole, keep reading.
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Writing and Christianity: Drawing Parallels
When it comes right down to it, I feel uncomfortable with calling myself a “writer”. I had always imagined writers as people who hunch over their typewriters (now computers), writing over 1,000 words a day without fail. Write an epic novel in half a year? No problem! But while writing is something that comes fairly naturally to me, the routine of it seems to elude me. Getting into a daily (or weekly) habit happens to be just beyond my grasp, and when I do happen to, for a moment, just touch it, my attention is diverted and I’m pulled back to where I began. When I don’t write for a while, I…
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Blogger Recognition Award
What better time is there to post about receiving award than at the start of a new year? Last Fall, I was nominated for the Blogger Recognition Award by Tana from Debt Free Forties, a financial management blogger who somehow happened upon my own blog. Thank you, Tana, for passing on the award. I’ve been struggling with writing over the past few months, which is why I haven’t been so active, and also why I haven’t mentioned this award yet. My original plan to post once a week has failed, but I’m working on changing this. So what is the Blogger Recognition Award, anyway? It’s an award given to bloggers by…
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After Graduation
When shaking the chancellor’s hand at my M.A. graduation ceremony this week, he asked with big hopeful eyes, “So what will you be doing now?”. And so I’ve been trying to answer that question. As of late, I’m finding myself swimming in my own head. Like I’ve said in my previous post, I’m not in school anymore. I’m not running off to classes or completing assignments; I’m not running through academic hoops. But it’s as if although I’ve finished this obstacle, there’s still a bigger one to climb. Plugging on forward based on my own goals and not someone else’s is really much harder than it looks, and I’m not…
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5 Tips On How To Read Books With A Busy Schedule
I’ve loved to read since before I can remember. I remember starting off with Ladybird books, then gradually moving to novels for kids, and then I started into my first mystery book series: Nancy Drew. These books carried me into my highschool years, where I unfortunately stopped reading for leisure for the most part. With the onslaught of homework, I had little time for reading outside of books for my English classes. This continued into my university years, where the homework was piled even higher. Read for pleasure? Who had the time for that? I even tried several times to read my Bible, but the progress never lasted long; I…
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A Letter To Myself Before Starting University
I’ve only just finished graduate school, and boy, does it ever feel weird to see other students start their school year while I’ve finished mine. I feel like my own opinions about university have evolved over this past year in graduate studies, and I wish I knew the things that I know now (because no one’s heard that one before). In my undergrad I started with a major in Neuroscience and then switched to Linguistics, which was good for me, but it also challenged my own perceptions of what I thought university would be, how long it would be (I needed to extend my four-year degree into five), and my…
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Liebster Award 2017
The Liebster Award is an award given within the blogging community, for upcoming blogs with potential with under 200 followers. It is given by bloggers and received by bloggers. In order to accept the award, the nominees must fill out requirements, such as posting the Liebster Award picture on their page, answering selected questions, and nominating other blogs. I have done this below. Thank you for your support, and thank you to Renae McGill at The Air Force Sweetheart for nominating my blog! What made you want to start blogging? I’ve always liked writing. I journal, write poetry, and started into some fiction writing. But I usually keep the finished…
