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Food: a good number of fruits and veggies today! very nice very tasty

Breakfast: egg and toast. finally made a decent egg with the new stainless steel pans!!

Lunch: kimchi on rice, mango slices

Snack 1: baked and seasoned chickpeas

Snack 2: a couple pieces of chocolate, a chunk of brie

Dinner: a bowl of potato/kale/onion/leek soup topped with parmesan cheese, some bread. I also made a molasses latte (no espesso, just molasses, cream, and hot water. They're SO good)

Dessert: some chocolate coconut pocky and part of a pomelo

Water: I drank water whenever I ate food today and after taking the dog out, so I had about 6 or 7 glasses. much better than I have been recently!

Activity: I took out the dog for a nice 30 minute walk, which included some light jogging because he claimed a pine cone (he likes to rush home when he finds a pine cone). It was very nice.

Maintenance:

did dishes

helped with grocery shopping and dinner prep

washed bedding

went through clothes for donation

Hobbies:

I practiced bass for about 30 minutes. I'm currently working on Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones, which I'm pretty comfortable with, and am in the early stages of the long term process that is learning cold weather by glass beach. Progress made on both fronts...I think when I'm done with Wild Horses I want to learn crazy little thing called love by queen. The bass line is very bouncy.

Got a few chapters into Paved Paradise, by Henry Grabar, which looks at parking in the US. Very interesting so far, and I like the author's writing style.

Tomorrow:

I'm planning to get up by 8 (going to bed shortly) and hopefully hang out with a friend before she leaves for school. No definitive plans yet but either tomorrow or the day after should work.

I would like to! Make! Progress! on the things I have been putting off doing! And will update with that if I follow through haha

Also intend to do some small errands and/or chores <3 I love arranging things and keeping everything tidyyy

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i'm looking forward to the next few months. I have a few different hobby projects going on (a painting, learning some songs on bass, refinishing a table, and I got a camera that's coming in next week so I'm hoping to play around with photography a bit). The camera I got partially because I don't really know what's happening for me after graduation, and I want to document any new place that I go or fun experiences. I think it'll be nice!

I have some school projects going on as well. I'm going to try and get published using my thesis from last semester (we'll see how that goes), I'm presenting at a tutoring conference, I'm getting to travel to Costa Rica for an ecology class (!!!), and there will just be fun and exciting things this last semester. It's a bit stressful to have no idea what's happening after, but I'm also a bit excited by it!

I'm intending to track things a bit here, so I might be posting more, but there is also no promise I'll keep up with that of course. We saw how that went last semester.

2025!!!

I'm hoping to do a little better at a few things this year. Practice for whenever I'm able to move out (hopefully sometime this summer, if I get an internship), just getting some better habits and such. There's a LOT with that so I'm gonna discuss those in below the readmore. I'm planning on using the smart goal technique (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) for these.

Dental Hygiene: I've noticed that when I don't have a scheduled "leaving the house now" time, for school and such, I often forget to brush my teeth in the morning. Not great! I also need to be better at flossing regularly and actually wear my retainer. I'm planning to start using a daily checklist to keep track of these, and start the retainer wearing with maybe 30 minutes while I'm awake and build up to wearing it at night again.

Face: Similarly to the brushing teeth issue above, I also don't wash my face in the morning if I'm not leaving the house. This isn't as bad, but I've been breaking out a bit more and also just find it soothing and a good way to wake up. I'd like to wash my face in the morning and evening, as well as exfoliate a couple times a week.

Skin picking: This!! Is!! A problem!!!! I get distracted by this very often, it's not hygienic, it aggravates my skin...I'm going to work on getting in the habit of washing my face AND avoiding picking at my skin, then once that's comfortable hopefully work on avoiding it at other times.

Drinking water: This needs improvement...I'm planning to have at least one glass of water with every meal, and to keep a glass of water with me when doing a seated activity. This shouldn't be very difficult to reestablish as a habit for me.

Eating produce: Fun fact, I'm vegetarian! This means that fruits and veggies are very important to my health, but effort in cooking is one of the first things to go for me when I'm tired. This is something I'm going to try to keep in mind...one fruit or veggie with every meal, and hopefully it'll build up from there. Eventually I want to get better at planning meals and cooking as well, but baby steps are important. I'm also generally better at that when I'm not living at home, because then I'm just cooking for myself and on my own schedule, so I'm less worried about this. It'll mostly be related to meal prep for school lunches.

Working out: I am very on-off when it comes to exercise routines. I enjoy working out, but once I miss a few days, it turns into months. I'd like to start with stretching in the mornings, which will just be good for me generally, and then build up into light jogging or doing some weights depending on my schedule for the day. This is something I'm going to be flexible with, since my cardio health is pretty much gone (sob) but we'll see how it goes!

Time online: I spend a lot of time on youtube and tumblr and sometimes instagram, which is not something I feel good about. I'm going to use the extension LeechBlock to address this on my laptop, as well as my phone. I don't have instagram on my phone (I only download it when I want to post something and delete it 24 hours later) but I use tumblr on my phone quite often. So, limiting that will be good. It will make me feel less dependent on screens, open up my time for other activities (bass, painting, cooking, chores, exercise, reading, etc.), and make me more comfortable with a lack of stimulation.

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2025!!!

I'm hoping to do a little better at a few things this year. Practice for whenever I'm able to move out (hopefully sometime this summer, if I get an internship), just getting some better habits and such. There's a LOT with that so I'm gonna discuss those in below the readmore. I'm planning on using the smart goal technique (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) for these.

Dental Hygiene: I've noticed that when I don't have a scheduled "leaving the house now" time, for school and such, I often forget to brush my teeth in the morning. Not great! I also need to be better at flossing regularly and actually wear my retainer. I'm planning to start using a daily checklist to keep track of these, and start the retainer wearing with maybe 30 minutes while I'm awake and build up to wearing it at night again.

Face: Similarly to the brushing teeth issue above, I also don't wash my face in the morning if I'm not leaving the house. This isn't as bad, but I've been breaking out a bit more and also just find it soothing and a good way to wake up. I'd like to wash my face in the morning and evening, as well as exfoliate a couple times a week.

Skin picking: This!! Is!! A problem!!!! I get distracted by this very often, it's not hygienic, it aggravates my skin...I'm going to work on getting in the habit of washing my face AND avoiding picking at my skin, then once that's comfortable hopefully work on avoiding it at other times.

Drinking water: This needs improvement...I'm planning to have at least one glass of water with every meal, and to keep a glass of water with me when doing a seated activity. This shouldn't be very difficult to reestablish as a habit for me.

Eating produce: Fun fact, I'm vegetarian! This means that fruits and veggies are very important to my health, but effort in cooking is one of the first things to go for me when I'm tired. This is something I'm going to try to keep in mind...one fruit or veggie with every meal, and hopefully it'll build up from there. Eventually I want to get better at planning meals and cooking as well, but baby steps are important. I'm also generally better at that when I'm not living at home, because then I'm just cooking for myself and on my own schedule, so I'm less worried about this. It'll mostly be related to meal prep for school lunches.

Working out: I am very on-off when it comes to exercise routines. I enjoy working out, but once I miss a few days, it turns into months. I'd like to start with stretching in the mornings, which will just be good for me generally, and then build up into light jogging or doing some weights depending on my schedule for the day. This is something I'm going to be flexible with, since my cardio health is pretty much gone (sob) but we'll see how it goes!

Time online: I spend a lot of time on youtube and tumblr and sometimes instagram, which is not something I feel good about. I'm going to use the extension LeechBlock to address this on my laptop, as well as my phone. I don't have instagram on my phone (I only download it when I want to post something and delete it 24 hours later) but I use tumblr on my phone quite often. So, limiting that will be good. It will make me feel less dependent on screens, open up my time for other activities (bass, painting, cooking, chores, exercise, reading, etc.), and make me more comfortable with a lack of stimulation.

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Applying for internships and they all require like five questions with 1-3 paragraph response length I forgot how much I HATE this teehee

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If anyone wants, I will compile and organize all the job boards I have bookmarked relating to biology, plants, conservation, fieldwork, research, and such positions. THERE ARE A LOT. I don't want to do this unless it would be helpful because it would take like. An entire afternoon just to go through my job bookmarks folder, much less organize and write additional advice. And that is not an exaggeration that is based on past efforts.

I think I also have an ancient reblog on my main blog with a lot of resources so I'll look for that too if people want. But lmk about all of these bc otherwise I'm going to put this off for a good few months. I wanna help people in a similar boat to myself but if no one is going to see or need it there's not much point in prioritizing it, instead of doing it when I have free time to work on it slowly over a longer academic break. So to be clear, I'll do it regardless, just. If people need help with that stuff soon lmk so I don't post about it too late for it to be really taken advantage of.

If people have other jobs seach related questions or concerns pls feel free to ask and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

Note: these job boards are almost all focused on U.S.-based positions

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HI things are going well but there's a lot and posting on here I the way I would like to takes a lot longer than I thought it would. So! I am not really doing that.

Quick update: thesis is going great I'm revising my results section and then I just gotta draft my discussion and I'll have all the writing sections mostly done :> I'm ahead of schedule pretty well actually hehe. Classes are, for the most part, all fun and pretty chill. Work is going well but I'm doing a lotttttt of workshops and taking extra hours. And then there's a lotta extracurriculars (volunteering and committee meetings) and job hunting so my free time is kinda lacking. But I've been getting decently consistent sleep, so that's nice!

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I had a class that was "we went to the garden and after my professor read a poem about dirt we could leave"

geology students will literally say shit like “my dirt class was cancelled today” or “the professor for my class on sand gave us homework about worms” like we’re 8 year olds on the playground inventing new terms for playing in the grass during recess

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sometimes your distress does indicate you should stop and respect your limitations. at other times it's more of a baby aquatic mammal being introduced to water for the first time thing. Too bad the difference is so hard to tell.

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thank you to whoever made this meme, it's a big hit in the lab and sends microbiologists into hysterics

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we are into week 2 and off with a bang! Over the last couple of days I did a BUNCH of readings for today and later this week, got some data organized, drafted an abstract, and worked on my mentoring program prep. We have been having an ant problem at home so I also did some deep cleaning and some preventative work, which has held up well so far...hopefully it continues to.

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i'm not going to describe the internships I applied to in detail while my application has an undetermined fate, but I spent maybe 20 minutes combined on submitting them so if anything comes of it I will be very amused. but they're very different so that would be...interesting

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⚡️ thesis progress

Finished my second draft of the introduction and sent it to my PI earlier today.

Agreed upon the timeline I created for thesis work.

Confirmed my participation in the college research symposium later this month. Which requires me to make a poster and. do other things. But I really enjoy presenting research, so some probable-late nights are worth it.

Scheduled data analysis for next week.

🌈 miscellaneous

For reasons I don't feel like fully explaining simply because it is lengthy and I'm tired, it's very likely that I did not get the internship (although I still don't have full confirmation). But I'm honestly kinda relieved because that would have been...rather a lot. I ended up applying to a couple random ones for after the school year that seemed interesting.

read ahead a little for my philosophy of science and environmental sustainability classes

catching up with my lab mates was really nice!! and the new members are very friendly; one of them I apparently share a class with.

Writing tutoring started properly this week and it was a lot busier than the beginning of semesters usually are! I had some really fantastic sessions with students, and the new cohort is shadowing us vets so they were very complimentary. Which is always nice :)

I've been making sure to schedule hangouts with various friends as well and I am excited!! For those to occur.

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I swear i'm not dead I am simply weary. But in a good way, I feel very satisfied.

This week was busy busy, as expected, but very enjoyable! I got everything I needed done, as well as a lot of planning ahead (and some upcoming readings).

I'm really happy with how the semester seems like it will go. I think that I will be posting more irregularly, although I plan to keep up with this sort of weekly checklist thing. And I do enjoy the day-to-day posts as well, I'll just not be able to hit that every single day.

work for the week (25-30 August)

readings:

Ch. 1 for plant morphology (done Aug 25)

Ch. 1 for sensory ecology (done Aug 26)

Ch. 6-7 for thesis class (done Aug 27)

Robertson article for environmental sustainability (done Aug 27)

articles for philosophy of science (done Aug 29)

Ch. 1 for philosophy of science (done Aug 29)

assignments:

second draft of introduction for thesis (done Aug 30)

baseline assessment for plant morphology (done Aug 26)

obligations:

fellowship meeting (done Aug 28)

mentor program introductions (moved to next week)

lab meeting (done Aug 30)

thesis meeting (done Aug 29)

tutor staff meeting (done Aug 30)

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listening to an audiobook while making myself a little snack after finishing school/work is SO <33333333