Back to Real Life: Hard Decisions

I'm set to go back to my program and start teaching in January, which is a little exciting but mostly terrifying. To be honest, I know that I'm capable, but I'm not sure if I'm completely ready. I'm not totally not ready, though, so I feel like I should push ahead. There are, however, a … Continue reading Back to Real Life: Hard Decisions →

Thinking about Epilepsy: Featured Questionnaire #4 (The “You Never Know What Other People Are Going Through, so Always Be Nice to Them/Flattery Totally Works—I’m Blushing and Feel So Good about Myself” Edition)

Featured Questionnaire #4 comes from a fellow PhDer and one of the most genuinely nice people I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering. Although we’re enough years apart in our program that I haven’t spent a lot of time with her (I’ve also been pitifully absent from my department since my epilepsy diagnosis … I … Continue reading Thinking about Epilepsy: Featured Questionnaire #4 (The “You Never Know What Other People Are Going Through, so Always Be Nice to Them/Flattery Totally Works—I’m Blushing and Feel So Good about Myself” Edition) →

Thinking about Epilepsy: Featured Questionnaire #2 (The “Child Hippie to Adult Academic” Edition)

The author of the second featured questionnaire and I go back to when we were child hippies unschooling on the West Coast. Now we've both moved east and are both in academia. Life's so weird. How much did you know about epilepsy before meeting me/before I was diagnosed with epilepsy/before reading my blog/before … Continue reading Thinking about Epilepsy: Featured Questionnaire #2 (The “Child Hippie to Adult Academic” Edition) →

Topamax: Five and a Half Months Later

I'm sure all y'all have been eagerly awaiting an update on what's been happening with Topamax, the antiepileptic medication that caused me to function at the level of a second-grader drugged on sleeping pills when I started taking it in May. Well, you'll be pleased to know that tremendous progress has been made: I now … Continue reading Topamax: Five and a Half Months Later →

(Not Going) Back to School

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I haven't been looking forward to Labour Day. Seeing as I seamlessly transitioned from taking to instructing courses, I’ve never lost that fall “going back to school” excitement/anticipation despite being in a year-round doctoral program. I love the rhythms and structure of the academic … Continue reading (Not Going) Back to School →

Summertime

Summertime living traditionally hasn’t been especially easy for me. I attribute this to the fact that there isn’t one of my favourite things—school—to give me structure and keep me intellectually engaged. In contrast with most of my peers in undergrad, who for whatever reason looked forward to the last day of classes (what??), I dreaded … Continue reading Summertime →

OCD Redux

Since writing about OCD a few weeks ago, I’ve had time to think more about some issues that I maybe should have addressed in that original post and others that have come up since then. Cue oversharing. Without getting into too many details, many of my OCD behaviours involve numbers; I have, for example, three–four … Continue reading OCD Redux →

Taking Time

I’ve toyed on and off with the idea of taking a medical leave of absence from my program for a while now, but the prospect's always made me uncomfortable. If I’m honest with myself (and with the entire internet), I’ve always felt that it would represent a personal failure of sorts, though this judgement is … Continue reading Taking Time →

Academic Update

Just in case you were wondering, I didn't meet my self-imposed end-of-January thesis goal. Not that I'm surprised, really. I used to be the kind of person who never missed deadlines, but things are, of course, different now, and that's OK. Really. I've spent from the middle of January up to now scraping by instead of … Continue reading Academic Update →

PhDetour

(Props to my husband for the title. He suggested it for a book that will never come to fruition, so I’m requisitioning it for use here.) I realize that this ostensibly epilepsy-and-academics blog has been heavy on the epilepsy side of things. It’s thus time, I guess, to include a little about school. Ah, PhD. … Continue reading PhDetour →