PHD DIARIES VLOG: getting published (book review), teaching, & work/life balance

Let's get started with our chat question for today. So I saw a TikTok, this is related to the chat question, I saw a TikTok that described the habit that formed during COVID uh for a lot of millennials and Gen Z called treat culture and I didn't know this had a name but I definitely partake in this where like to break your day into two halves you have to go out and get a little treat simply for rewarding yourself for surviving. So my question for you guys is what is your go-to little treat? For example, mine is going through the Dunkin drive-thru and getting the butter pecan latte because I'm obsessed. A yoohoo, oh my gosh I haven't had a yoohoo since I was like seven years old, wow. A fun little drink, any drink, I'm with you on that. Ice cream, ice cream midday, wow to me ice cream is like a post-dinner thing but you're living. Ice cream, fries, Starbucks coffee, a refresher, a pumpkin loaf, ice chai, ice chai tea. Okay this was fun, I'm happy to see all of your little treats. Hello, welcome back to another vlog. Today is Wednesday, I finished up teaching this morning and I am now in the Target parking lot gonna run some errands. I did a sort of deep clean reorganization of underneath my bathroom sink like countertop yesterday and I realized I just need some more things for that and I just need like random things like hair ties, like a beauty blender type thing. So we're gonna go into Target and we're gonna stick to the list. I also just dropped some stuff off at Goodwill so let's get in there, let's go to Target. Okay nothing too exciting, just some q-tips. Going back to the basics with Real Techniques beauty sponge. These gimme beauty hair ties which is my favorite brand and these have like this little no slip grip which I've never tried before but it specifically says no snag silicone so that's good and then this was not on my list but look how cute it is and it was only like five bucks I think. It was in like the ecology sort of brand section but reminds me of Animal Crossing. So it is a little after 12 o'clock now and I'm trying to decide what I want to eat. I had some toast earlier today um but lately I've been doing this thing where I eat two breakfasts and then not really eat a lunch and then I eat like an early dinner and it throws off the schedule because Megan and I usually like grocery shop and meal plan and like cook together so I don't know I'm really torn. If we have extra blueberries and if I have pancake mix I might make some blueberry pancakes. Okay slay not a whole lot of pancake mix but that's enough for like one big one or two small ones and then some blueberries. Just washed this little cherry mug and then made myself a nice matcha. This is the matcha mix I've been using lately from Trader Joe's and I feel like this is the best tasting one when you add sugar and the closest to Starbucks and also by far the cheapest. Okay I am feeling pretty unmotivated to do anything. This has been the theme lately I think because it's summer and I just like really want a month-long break which I'm planning to take mostly in July. Um anyway I need to do something so typically when I'm feeling unmotivated I will watch like a motivating vlog like a productive vlog or something but I don't have anything in my inbox so I think I'm just gonna read. I haven't gotten new books from the library lately so I might go through one search IU which is just like the catalog of all books at IU and look at what seems interesting and just order a bunch of stuff. Um I also have a book review due at the end of July for an edited collection and I have already worked my way through that edited collection a while ago so I could also revisit that. Um just know I mean I just know that I need to do some reading and I don't know what to do. Okay gonna start by going back through this book the one that I mentioned I'm doing the book review for and maybe if they cite some interesting things I'll go into a rabbit hole of looking for things on one search IU. Okay a couple hours later and not even like one one and a half I have no idea how long it's been I lost track of time anyway it's later and I just put together a guideline for what I need to do for the book review it's only 1500 words which is going to be tough because there are a lot of individual chapters in here because there's shorter narratives too and here's what I need to do have a summary and analysis depth of critical assessment demonstrate the willingness to a certain opinion and situate the text in relationship to like the field and just like other recent works and I looked at another book review of an edited collection published in the last issue just did like a really basic rhetorical analysis of it um just like reversed outlined it basically and I brainstormed some really early thoughts of how I'm going to situate this in relation to the field and then I did a really close deep reading of the intro because I feel like that's really important for a book review and also really important for like understanding the work I've read the intro I want to say like two or three times but I don't know you get something different every time you read it so I just made some bullet points of their major points and asked myself some questions identified Pirelli don't step on my keyboard identified some major points what I thought their major contribution was or what they thought their major contribution was and um just some other things that were of note in the intro some key quotes and now I'm going to go through and read some of the chapters over the span of the next couple weeks and sort of fluff this out this outline out in order for me to be able to like write the 1500 words I also jotted down these two books that I need to look at one is by Margaret Price called mad at school rhetoric of mental disability she talks about the idea of fleshy presences so this has been something that's come up time and time again for me but I just haven't quite looked at it yet and then the second one how stories teach us composition life writing and blended scholarship I think will be helpful for my thoughts about personal writing which if you've watched the recent vlogs you know that's something I'm very much thinking through as of lately watching married at first sight on Netflix and gonna have a little at home manicure moment I think I'm gonna do a chocolate brown color it's about six o'clock now it is so bright and sunny you could convince me that it was like 2 p.m and I believe you um today's actually the summer solstice so that makes sense like last night mine and I were like this is crazy it was so bright out it was 9 30 like it didn't even look like it was starting to get dark um so because it's not dark yet I feel like I should still get some more work done so I think I'm gonna continue reading that book all I really did was teach and read the intro of that book it's been a very lazy day so I'll read some more of that book um and then make some dinner and admire a late sunset I guess it's 10 30 now my hair wow because it's like half wet half dry when I showered before dinner um I'm gonna make myself a little to-do list on my phone for things I want to get done in the morning I have physical therapy at 11 30 meaning I'm gonna leave here around like 11 10 ish and I have quite a few things that I want to like do before I go to physical therapy because I don't know how I'm gonna feel when I come back um I mean typically I'm never like in pain or anything but sometimes I just feel like I don't know exhausted uh and just like sometimes like mentally defeated if I feel like I'm not making any progress but anyway we're not gonna manifest that so I'm just gonna pull up my notes app and literally just like make a list of things I want to do I don't think I'm gonna time block it or anything I just have been like putting off responding to a lot of emails which I know is like really bad because I feel like it makes super irresponsible um I mean none of them are super important like literally when people emailed me they were like no rush on this but I should have at least like acknowledged that I got the email but I don't know sometimes responding to emails just like feels like the end of the world so that's not having anxiety um so yes that's gonna be the first thing I need to do emails and I also need to explain what goes in a letter of support because some previous students have agreed to write me a letter of support um for this teaching award that I'm applying for which I talked a lot about my last vlog so I need to let them know what the scholar no I keep saying scholarship the award committee is looking for I don't want to provide them with some letterhead because I don't think undergrads will have that and there was something else I wanted to do oh I want to work my way through another article that is probably like an hour to two hours of work which will probably be pretty good because I want to sleep in a little bit tomorrow um I've just been really tired lately also got my period today so that explains the lack of motivation I'm just like feeling like groggy and sleepy and just fatigued um and then when I get back from physical therapy I will work on doing the lesson planning for the final unit of the course we are in week seven of an eight-week course and then the last week is just a revision unit so it's not gonna be like a super crazy lesson plan or anything um but I need to like come up with a formal assignment sheet and like decide how I'm gonna do all of that and assess all of that I'm starting to get a little stressed out not necessarily about stuff I have to do this week just like realizing like oh my god it's already June 21st and I have a writing deadline July 1st um yeah that's a that's a problem for tomorrow me to take off I will see you guys tomorrow hello good morning aunt life wearing the shirt to go to physical therapy um happy Thursday this morning I woke up and I said let's get after it let's do some writing and I did 998 words of free writing to the prompt of what is my dissertation about and why does it matter and this was sort of prompted by just feeling like is this all done is the work that I've been like working on for is that a bug okay it's on the anyway is the work that I've been doing the past year several years silly does anyone care about this so I had to remind myself why it matters um and that felt good to write that it did um it sort of talked about what are the big themes that I have and how do they all sort of connect to each other and in my last meeting with my advisor we talked about how writing is often writing the same thing like 15 different times until you actually believe what you're saying you know what you're saying so I feel like I'm getting closer um and this is good he also told me I now have his permission to send him free writing instead of only usable writing and that freed a lot of weight from me so now I feel confident that I can send him something by July it's definitely not going to be a cohesive chapter draft but it's going to be something so I actually met with someone and she asked me how often I met with someone from YouTube and she asked me how often I meet with my advisor and how I pick my advisor so I can chat about that quickly so every advisor is different and my advisor likes to play a pretty prominent role in things he sort of sets the schedule for things it's not me running the show but I know with some other advisors they make it grad student-led and the grad student needs to reach out to them to decide how often they want to meet so my advisor reached out to me in the beginning of summer and he was like let's get a meeting on the calendar every two weeks and if we decide we don't need it we cancel it but I'd rather have it drafted like in the books because he's a very busy guy and throughout the semester we were meeting every week because I was like a TA for a grad course he was teaching and I feel like I'm always a part of something that he's teaching so we've just been meeting every week for the past like two or three years it sounds like and the way that we came to work together is he was the chair of the committee of one of my friends and I knew that she had a really good experience with him and I had like told her like hey everything at IU like really sucks right now I feel like I'm not able to like study what I want to study because this is a rhetoric program and I want to study composition and she was like why don't you just meet with him and see what he has to say and he was just like excellent and was like look we can make an independent study and we'll just see where it goes from there and so as he was like drafting the stuff for the independent study he was like do you want to work together and I was like yeah let's do it but a lot of times it's really like not that hard you kind of just like you've taken a few classes you know who you vibe with they probably see it coming and you're like you want to be the chair of my committee but I don't really know anyone who says no at least here at least in English at IU Bloomington so yeah I know I've shared that story before but I was just wanting to share it again because I feel like some other people might be wondering what it's like to like work with an advisor how often you guys meet and stuff like that picking your advisor is probably like one of the most important parts I think of like the second half of grad school when you're in the all the dissertation ABD phase so choose wisely uh because it's a big deal so that's my Thursday morning piece of advice so I'm gonna drive over to physical therapy gonna drop off a bunch of recycling on the way I have two huge boxes that that I built in my last vlog and good riddance they've been sitting on my kitchen floor and I need to get rid of them you guys will never guess where I am Culver's this is the third vlog in a row that I've gone to Culver's and I went to Culver's twice in one of the vlogs anyway I'm just getting a diet coke and some cheese curds because you have to get these before you go to home goods or TJ Maxx you just you have to several hours later now it's 3 55 I am back from home goods and physical therapy obviously if I was at home goods for that long someone check on me but I went in looking for a soap dispenser that I didn't get at Target yesterday and I'm so glad that I held off I went to TJ Maxx because I got a really cute set of two dispensers and like a holder for 15 total when like one dispenser itself was like 15 or 20 at Target so I knew home goods would be a better deal and I found one that was week year and then of course I had to get some other stuff got some hand towels got some pillows and I posted a bunch of stuff that was cute but I didn't add to my cart on my Instagram story so this is a plug to follow me on Instagram if you don't do that already and then it actually felt kind of cool out I think because it's like overcast and it's been looking like it's about a rain for the past few hours really for the past few days so I laid in the hammock and read some more of that edited collection that I'm doing the book review on and now I feel like I smell like outside so I'm going to take a quick body shower and then I am going to lesson plan it felt really good to wake up and get like all that writing sort of out of me and like out of the way but I have had like this lesson planning sort of like hanging over my head all day and that kind of sucks it just gives me a lot of anxiety planning a new unit and like making that assignment sheet because even though like this assignment is just a revision unit it's not a big task a big task it just I don't know it feels like a big thing it's something that just like is very anxiety inducing for me for some reason so yeah the sooner I get it over with the sooner I can just like feel the sense of relief but thankfully I don't have to also plan for tomorrow since we are just doing conferences instead of having class okay checking back in changed from one aunt shirt to another I love those shirts so soft um and I am indeed a cool aunt but Crowley is begging because she wants some dinner I feel it is 6 56 I realized I hit a sort of roadblock with planning or making the assignment sheet for this assignment so I had to send a sort of panicked email um it's a long story but to spare you the details basically it's really hard to teach an intensive writing class from a measured in words and that's not how like video is measured uh it's not video isn't even measured in like time length or like time length lol and like the length of it it's a lot more complex than that um but alas here we are the university's still not caught up to the way students write in everyday life but that's my soapbox issue at the moment so I think I'm gonna warm up I left around to water from dinner last night and watch some more of married at first sight happy friday made it to friday made it to the end of the week it is already I think almost noon yeah 11 49 p.m I slept in today because I didn't have to teach this morning so I was like yeah why not and I had one office hours meeting with a student and another one signed up at noon as I mentioned we I decided to cancel class today just to give students more time to work on their final projects and instead do like optional office hours students I think like really appreciate having like a dedicated sign-up sheet for office hours because I don't know students like feel bad just like dropping it to office hours or emailing me scheduling a time to meet but if I like say hey here's a sign-up sheet where I'm gonna like specifically meet with students and then students decide to come so if you're a teacher and you're struggling to get students to come to office hours that's something that I found that works for me I also decided to get ready today did my hair put on some quick makeup because I've just been feeling a little blah I need a way to like spice up my summer life I just asked my instagram story put a little like question box and was like what do you guys do when you feel stuck in a rut specifically in the summer I don't know if it's because I've been seeing like a lot of people traveling and stuff and I do have some traveling coming up that I'm really excited for but I'm just like how do you guys afford to go to Europe especially see other grad students like in Europe I'm just like how are you there like granted they're probably not going to home goods and target every day but like even if I didn't do that I would not have Europe money so let me know how you guys are doing this okay back in the car gonna get a fun little drinkity so I think I'm gonna get a decaf coffee because I actually really feel a nap coming on um I didn't sleep super great last night I was honestly feeling pretty panicky so I took some hydroxyzine which is like panic pills but they like knock you out but then they don't give you like they give you like fake sleep so then you just sort of feel like a zombie the next day so I'm feeling a little bit like a zombie right now um so yeah I'm not gonna push it that's also why I don't feel like doing some of the stuff but that's what's like living with anxiety so gonna get a decaf coffee so that I'm able to probably still take a nap and Megan's gonna get a strawberry acai refresher no worries can I do a tall strawberry acai refresher with lemonade and then can I do a tall hot decaf white mocha latte and that'll be it thanks so Megan just finished reading fourth wing and she was giving me an update about her thoughts and I said wait do you want to be on the vlog because I feel like a lot of people are reading fourth wing right now and I feel like Megan could give a good update so here we go also this is the first time you've been on the vlog I think look at your sweater hi vlog I will do my best but I still I feel like I'm coming down I feel like I was just laying in my bed like this for an hour um so I really liked it I give it like it's not perfect though um like I really really liked it I couldn't put it down but I wouldn't give it a five out of five um but I did pre-order the next one um the characters were fun the romance was fun the dragons were incredible I just don't think we got enough of the dragons okay some of the world building felt a little flimsy and I did like how plot-driven and fast-paced it was because I couldn't put it down but I also feel like that was at the expense of some of the writing and slowing things down to build up the world to talk more about the dragons to draw out the romance a little um so all that to say it was very good I'm looking forward to the next one so I do recommend it to me it's kind of like um I haven't read all of Sarah J Maas's books I've only read Crescent City so to me it's kind of at like that level of writing and vibe that was such a good book review that's better than any book review I give really I mean it's not on the influencer who shall not be named level of it was good 2.5 out of 5 stars really like the main character but I feel like my book reviews are like I like the plot I didn't like the ending here's a content warning but Megan was like the world building was flimsy came at the expense of the writing well it's all fresh and I'm just telling myself this is for the people that get it so and who are interested in like these kind of books to begin with so if you have read this or you will read it soon reach out to me somehow some way so we can talk about it uh very good leave a comment for Megan leave a comment I'll respond very good very fun but the ending I if you read the ending I feel like I got motion sickness just reading about it so that's good I feel like that's like a strength of the writing but also so much was crammed into the ends that I'm decompressing I'm processing Sarah so that's my review purrs under me I say it's an A-plus review I haven't read the book I'm not into fantasy like that but everyone is raving about this book so I'm contemplating okay it is 10 38 my makeup is very ready to come off smudging quite a bit because I was rubbing my eyes I thought for sure I would nap today because I was so tired but I didn't and I just feel like I've been dragging all day long um I didn't do a whole lot today that's why I didn't vlog a lot today the most like productive thing I did aside from like those conferences for office hours was I changed my like youtube banner photo um to better like align with like the new like profile sort of circle picture I have on youtube which is like from like the professional photo shoot I had um I guess I never talked about that it was a photo day where this photographer in Bloomington offered a 10 minute session and you would get five photos from it which was perfect for me because I didn't want like a whole lot I didn't need a whole lot but I was like five photos perfect I got a new headshot it'll be like a cute little treat yourself moment and I'm really glad I did that because the photos came out beautiful and she edited them too you could pick like a background color and it was in her studio anyway Megan and I have both been feeling sort of like what are we even doing we don't have much to live for we're stuck in these ruts so we have some fun things planned tomorrow I'm gonna get a little library card she's gonna go for a run um so I will continue the vlog on into tomorrow um and maybe I'll start uploading on Mondays or something stay tuned I should probably shower and wash my hair but that's not gonna happen till tomorrow I just got a library card Megan took me and now we're gonna get some parlor donuts here's downtown it's actually so hot today I think so are you gonna get like the crazy one? I think so I don't know if I trust their matcha I want I don't want a coffee but I want something fun well honestly it might be bad matcha so you might like it the moment we've all been waiting for yum this is coconut cream filled which I feel like could be really good and I don't like coconut that much but filled donuts are elite raspberry filled bourbon caramel and what was that huckleberry huckleberry I wanted to say honeysuckle but that's not right huckleberry glaze or something it just looks good okay so it is obviously Saturday now the dishwasher is going but I'm going to show you the book that I got from the library I feel like this could be a new sort of hobby for me or just something to do where I don't spend money they gave me this cute little sticker that says I got my library card it's a unicorn dabbing dabbing um and then this is the book I got I just went through my goodreads to be read or like want to read list and just sort of like walked through the aisles and just looked if there were any of them there and this one was there called While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams I saw this book in this series at Morgan Zurns which is a local bookstore here and it had really good reviews on goodreads so I was happy to find the first one there and then Megan got this one called Jane Unlimited by Kristen Kishore let's use your name right Kristen Kishore yeah because she read the Graceling series by her and absolutely loved it that is Megan one of Megan's favorite series and one of our other friend Peyton's favorite series read it that's her recommendation read Graceling if you're into is it young adult is Graceling young adult I think so yeah okay because this was in the young adult section um but our friend said that she heard like mixed reviews about this but like the inside jacket sounds really interesting it's like this person walks into this house and there's like five options that give her like a different path of her life um so it could be giving midnight library vibes but I think it could also be good okay just finished editing the vlog up to this point just like the rough cuts and the music and stuff stuff to add like text and transitions and the fun stuff but it's almost four o'clock and I really need to get some work done so I'm going to sit on my porch and work my way through some grading for this project students created vlogs and I'm excited to see what they made okay it is getting far too hot out here I gotta go inside okay it is a little after six o'clock I did some grading you guys they're so good and I know I need to take this as a win for myself and say I played a partial role in instructing students on how to create these projects and even like coming up with the assignment sheet for it but also just like I know it's like 99% the students I feel like pumped about this um but I'm taking a break because I need to like ride this high and I'm gonna go to Goodwill and try and find some fun vases or glasses or something and Megan and I are gonna have a little like painting party um so I'm probably gonna have to unfortunately go to Hobby Lobby to get some painting stuff because Michael's enjoying fabrics for like the other side of town um so yeah let's do it okay here's my finished product I did a little cherries and some flowers and Megan did a masterpiece I didn't know she had this in her just like look at that the layers the poppies shoot which ones are the poppies the red ones yeah those are good it's literally just a circle with a black dot but she crushed it you guys I try so hard vlog I have to get in the right head space ah slay and Pirelli is just happy to be playing in the bags okay 11 17 and I'm gonna go ahead and end off the vlog here gotta wash my face brush my teeth and get ready for bed you guys made it to the end thanks for watching uh as always let me know what you want to see in future videos and just truly again sincerely thank you for watching making these videos is really fun for me but it wouldn't be nearly as fun if I didn't have you guys supporting me and just the opportunity to chat with you guys in the comments and emails and on Instagram and all of that good stuff so I'll see you guys in the next one bye