[Newsletter] Year 5
🌞 Hello!
Welcome to my newsletter project, Little Rays of Light!
This is my attempt at keeping a record of thoughts and ideas during my last year as a PhD student. I envision that a lot of the writing will be self-reflective and stream of consciousness, but I also hope it might be useful for anyone interested in the work that I’m doing, or studying outside of their country of origin, or generally just interested in catching up (hi irl friends!).
I’m hoping to update this space every 2-3 weeks, and to have ongoing sections so I can also keep track of the things I’m interested in. I’m trying to be hopeful that I can keep this newsletter alive for a year, but maybe let’s keep our fingers crossed that I can even make it to a second issue.
If you have any questions or would like to know about specific areas where I may have expertise, feel free to contact me. I’d love to hear from you.
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Year 5
I’m about to start my fifth (and hopefully final) year of my PhD program. A lot of the work done in a doctoral program is largely independent - while I “report” to my dissertation adviser regularly (a schedule that we set up ourselves), everything I do is mostly on my own terms. For someone used to working in an Asian work culture, the freedom is terrifying. It meant that there was nobody to tell me what to do, that there was no hierarchy that I could fall back on, that there were no work patterns to observe, mimic, and (hopefully) excel at.
It also meant that I determined the shape of my “failures” (I would argue that a PhD isn’t a binary of success/failure - as so many folks have told me when I was starting out, a good dissertation is a done dissertation). This is perhaps the one that I have been having trouble confronting the most: I always feel like I am perpetually delayed, that I could be better at what I’m doing. I think self-doubt is more prevalent in academia because we spend so much time in our heads, and we have a tendency to be critical, which extends towards our innermost selves.
If there’s one thing (among the many, many things) that I am learning about myself during this PhD journey, it’s to trust the process and to trust myself - that I’m doing the best that I can with the circumstances that I have been given. That if a PhD is that easy, then everyone would have done it. That it is deliberately designed to give you time to think and ruminate and put down thoughts to paper, and sometimes that is not the easiest thing in the world. But I’d like to think that I’ll be a better version of myself at the end of this process, and I’m hopeful that that future version is worth the work.
Media Updates
📚 I just finished re-reading An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard in preparation for diving into its sequel, A Sleight of Shadows. I’ve always been interested in the ways in which urban fantasy becomes a commentary on the power dynamics, and how this manifests in magic - in fact, after re-reading the first book, I’m reminded of another magician whose powers bring down a corrupt social order: El, from, Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series.
⏯️ I’m currently rotating through three albums: the re-release of Backstreet Boys’ second studio album, now titled Millennium 2.0; the soundtrack for the animated movie K-Pop Demon Hunters (an absolute banger when working out too!); and the original Broadway cast recording of Maybe Happy Ending, which is perhaps one of the best musicals I have ever seen in my entire life, and would highly recommend(if you ever have the opportunity) to see it onstage.
📺 I’m not really a TV person, but I’m enjoying the new season of Game Changer on Dropout.tv, as well as the first season of the new show board game/comedy Parlor Room. A lot of my “TV watching” is really just watching Youtube and streaming shows online (see above) but I would count Dropout as one of the best investments I’ve ever made. But if we want to talk about “traditional” network TV, I’m looking forward to diving into Season 3 of Strange New Worlds - the first two seasons have been absolutely enjoyable. With the cancellation of Lower Decks, SNW is the only Star Trek series currently airing.