a week in my life | presentation, PhD workshop, 10 mile run | UNI VLOG 🎄
Good afternoon, it is getting to be extremely cold in Manchester. I'm feeling kind of chilly
but today is Wednesday. I have much to do. 10am tomorrow I have another presentation
which I think I mentioned in my last video. It's my prime editing presentation and luckily
my part this time is much less significant. It's about half the time so I'm only talking for about
three and a half minutes which is such a great feeling but I only have the rest of this evening
to learn my script and you know I want to do well so I'm gonna be doing that but I also need to do
a food shop and it's better to go before like 5pm because that's when it gets really busy
so I might go now. I need to just buy everything. Literally all I have in my fridge is oat milk,
butter and mayonnaise. No vegetables, nothing fresh, not even cheese. So this morning I met
with my group at 9am until 11am and we went through the presentation, we made some design
changes and we just made sure everyone was happy with the quality of it. Then I went to the library
for a couple of hours, I did all of my emails for YouTube which I've been putting off for ages
and I also did some reading for my literature review which I've still not started but
I will be starting it soon. The first draft is due in a couple weeks and before I start the draft I
need to send an outline of like bullet points to my supervisor just to make sure that I'm along
the right lines and so that is due in two days, my little outline. Right now all I need to worry
about is my food shop and my presentation for tomorrow. Immediately after we do the presentation
we get guidance on this essay that is due a week tomorrow and then we have a week to write it of
course but also on Tuesday next week I have this seminar and we have a deadline on the same day as
the essay to create a summary of that seminar and so ideally I want to have this essay done by
Tuesday and then I will have the two days to focus on the summary however on the day of the
summary my mum and my sister are coming to visit me and that has been planned for months and they
just sprung this seminar on us on the same day and now I'm kind of annoyed but what can you do?
So even though they'll be here I will hopefully still be able to write the summary quickly I hope
but yes after I was in the library doing my readings I went to a PhD interview workshop
which is basically just like a panel of four PhD students and some people from the careers team and
they just talked about what you can expect in a PhD interview and also some advice for like
personal statements when you're applying but really the personal statement isn't that important it's
quite general it's just to get your foot in the door and then once you have the interview you have
really shine and show your personality show you that you're authentic why you want to be there
and to prepare yourself for a lot of different questions and sometimes for a PhD you have a
series of individual interviews you could have a panel interview they could ask you to make a
presentation on your research or on a topic they choose and they can give you papers and say let's
discuss this have a read stuff like that so lots to consider and PhDs have kind of been in the back
of my mind the last month because I keep meaning to sit down and apply to some and write some
personal statements and boost my CV but then I keep getting new deadlines and I need to do
different things and I keep I feel like I'm getting pulled all these different directions and
I never actually make the time to apply for PhDs but the time is now deadlines are passing they
have come and gone and I'm sure I've already missed out on loads of ridiculous opportunities that I
would have wanted to apply for so all I can do is try and be as efficient with my time as I can but
yeah there is just like a lot going on all the time and I can't really stop and think about everything
I need to do because I'll start getting quite overwhelmed and then I won't want to get up and do
stuff also with it being like late November now the sun is barely ever out that makes it a bit
scary to go running or to walk home from uni after like 6 p.m it gets kind of creepy and cold and
misty so I'm tending to feel like inclined to stay at home but I do work really well out of my
room in the library anyway I guess it's time to do a food shop there's just so many things I need
and everything ran out at once like even my fairy liquid my moisturizer my SPF my cleanser all of my
food and I wish I could just put it off but like I need all these things to function and I can't
just do my work 24 7 so it's kind of forcing me to go on a little walk and have a break I guess but
then I will spend like five hours practicing my presentation on and off like record myself
listen to it think about my tone and my delivery and then try again and maybe change a few words
and then try and write it down from memory stuff like that it's really not that serious but I get
very nervous before presentations and so I'm trying to make myself feel like well equipped
anyway let's go to the shop even though I really do not want to right now
hello I just got home and I showered very quickly got dressed again did my makeup again I just had
my presentation this morning and I didn't really have enough time to shell before because I was
just practicing like this morning in like an hour and a half I went from very very nervous to like
almost confident and then we had it and it went completely fine I didn't forget any lines and
he did ask me a question afterwards which I kind of didn't know the full answer to
but I answered it to the best of my ability I'm going to go back to campus head to the library
and I'm going to start on my essay I don't know what to do because I want to take my summer bag
I don't want to have to carry my laptop it's really heavy but the library gets very busy and
some days there are no computers free there are only empty desks available for laptops and so
I don't want to go all the way not take my laptop and then have nothing to work on that would be
kind of annoying but I want to take my beautiful bag but honestly at this point maybe I am
procrastinating a little bit I need just to go I also missed my 5k training run this morning which
made me kind of sad but I know I'll make up for it another time so it's okay I'm kind of at the
point where I know I can run regularly and it's not really a matter of convincing myself to do it
or that I can do it it's just finding the time because I'm getting increasingly busier and busier
and I don't want to miss out on any opportunities but I'm also kind of running out of any time to do
new things so maybe I need to start prioritizing what is more important and some things will just
have to be forgotten but hopefully we don't get to that point let's go before I keep talking for ages
I'd like to take a moment to thank Unriddle who is a sponsor of today's video. Unriddle
is an AI research assistant that helps you quickly find insights in scientific literature
so that you can read and write papers faster. Unriddle's AI extracts specific information from
pdf, word documents, powerpoints and images that you upload. Ask the AI questions to get quick
summaries and simplified explanations. You can also upload video lectures or paste links to
youtube videos for instant summaries, saving time when you need it the most. Unriddle can also help
you find citations to back up your writing. Simply highlight your text and press cite. You can change
the citation format in settings. I love that Unriddle creates a summary for each paper and
If you're looking for a concise answer you can keep the word limit at 120 words but you can
remove this limit for a more detailed response. It's also really helpful that Unriddle can direct
you to the exact location in the paper that it's sourcing the information from. Make this semester
a good one with Unriddle. Try it out now for free or use code LEAH20 for a 20% discount on your
I already made a new to-do list for the week so I'm just gonna sit here, eat my breakfast and like
pack my bag, get dressed, do my makeup just so that I can leave once therapy is done. Today is
library day. My mum and my sister are visiting me tomorrow afternoon and all of Wednesday so
I need to get a lot of work done today. I have an essay that I want to submit by tomorrow at one
because at one I have this seminar on plant cell walls and we have to write a summary for that due
in two days. Yeah I don't know if that made any sense but basically I need to finish this essay
today and have of tomorrow. So I did some planning for it last week luckily so hopefully it's not too
hard. I just washed my face, I've got my electric blanket and I've got my journal and so I'm all
set to sit in this spot without moving for like the next two hours.
So I just had my therapy and I will share some of what we spoke about this week.
It was quite an insightful session and I find talking about it on camera afterwards kind of
helps me to reinforce what I've learned. Sometimes I feel like there's this transition period between
having my therapy and then starting my day where I just have to kind of re-evaluate everything I've
just spoken about. Today we focused a lot on my fear of failure. I think I hold myself back
very much because I'm really afraid of trying and failing. I view failure as such a bad thing when
really it's just evidence that you tried and it still helps you grow even if you didn't achieve
what you wanted. This kind of ties in to feelings of inadequacy for me. I've spoken before about how
I really lack confidence in myself and my abilities and I kind of reinforce this by
minimizing my achievements no matter what they are. One example of this is now with running.
If you would have told me six weeks ago that I ran 10 miles I would have been really impressed
but then yesterday I did it and I started to tell myself like it's not impressive, it's not
something to be proud of, like anyone could do that if they tried which is just so bizarre like
that I feel the need to kind of convince myself that I've not achieved anything and that I don't
need to feel proud. Going forward this week I want to stop viewing failure as this be-all-end-all
of horrible things that I must avoid at all costs and I want to kind of respond to the version of
myself that feels I can't do things and just see why I feel like that. I'll be going to the library
later and I already know when I'm sat there working I'm gonna start thinking pretty negatively about
myself. I tend to avoid thinking because I expect it to end up in a spiral of like feeling anxious
and the more I do that and the more I try and not think the worse it gets because I never address
anything I just kind of try and brush everything away and move on and that's just not how it works
like stuff will come back until you address it and so yeah I am extending my suffering there
like forcing myself to ignore things and just keep working and eventually it's just gonna get me
and I think that's why so often I get these periods of just like not being able to work
or do anything or go on a walk or watch tv like sometimes it just feels like I can't physically
I can't make myself do stuff anymore and I think it is because I neglect my inner thoughts so much
and I don't allow myself any space to like fail until it gets to this overwhelming stage where
I can't do anything but sit there and I guess fail in a way so yeah just gonna try and let myself
live day by day that always helps me so much just viewing life as one day at a time
because I will think about the future so much and it makes me so scared because I don't know what's
gonna come and I'm just scared of a lot of things to be honest really scared I am like the least
chill person you would ever meet ever not gonna lie so I'm trying to work on that I think the
first step to healing from anything is just admitting that you do it and that it's not good
for you I can just start by trying new things and seeing how that part of me feels and asking myself
like are you okay even now I just sat here for 20 seconds and I thought about all the things I need
to do today and I could feel this anxiety in my chest like I don't know how I'm gonna do all that
I don't know how but I'm most certainly not going to achieve anything if I just sit here and think
about it and feel scared so yeah that's all I really have to say but if you get it you get it
if you don't good for you perhaps it gives you some more perspective on how other people might
think I don't know sometimes I feel like I'm literally the only person in the world that
thinks like this because it is so messed up it's okay though you know I'm trying whatever
but how am I meant to leave my heated blanket at home and go to the library with no blanket let's go
toast of course and I'm about to go to the gym I'm just gonna run my 8k on the treadmill and
then I'm gonna come home and shower finish off my essay I got to about 700 words yesterday
and I made a really nice figure that I'm really proud of so hopefully I can get that done and then
1pm I need to go to a seminar but before I do that I need to like make sure I understand exactly
what they want me to write so that I know what to listen for because it's not being recorded and
we have to do it on this seminar so I think it's to kind of test our listening skills and how we
can absorb information in a strict time frame but I've never done anything like that so I'm a little
bit like not nervous but kind of like cautious that it might be harder than I thought but after
that I'm gonna go and I'm gonna meet my mum and my sister because they're coming to visit me and
they're staying tonight in a hotel so I'm happy and we're gonna go out for dinner so yeah it's
gonna be a really good day I'm really excited to go on my run and I had previously been very very
uncomfortable running on the treadmill because they didn't have a fan and it would get so hot
and I was just not used to it but when I went on Sunday and did my long run I found that this
different type of treadmill has a really good fan on it and so now I feel really reassured that if
it's ever raining or dark or icy I can just go to the gym and I love the gym it's a great gym
so I'm feeling really positive this morning and just like ready to start my day so yeah I'm just
gonna get dressed and go