SUMMER IS HERE ☀️

i finished my 4th (penultimate) year of my Ph.D. program and earned my second master’s degree and now i have ENTERED THE ZONE OF SUMMERTIME AND FIC WRITINGGGG (and dissertation too but i’m taking a baby break from that right now!)

written june 6, 2024 @ 2:14pm

greetings, my lovelies!

the last five months (january, february, march, april, and may) have been so rich with productivity, milestone accomplishments, and overall life happiness!

let’s first do a quick recap of my goals, which i posted in my last entry on january 6th:

• ✅ master’s thesis (#2/in passing):

  • ✅ finish final revisions on my (second!) master’s thesis then send it to my advisor for final feedback (if applicable) and approval, so that i can apply to

  • ✅ graduate for my (second!!!) master’s degree for this spring

    • done!

• ✅ prep hiring ad for potential research assistants so i can find my RA for the spring semester (last semester my RA was soo good and i got so spoiled, gah).

  • i ended up with 4 RAs by the end of the spring semester! 😂 some were… more efficient than others. but overall, all 4 of them contributed in some way to the success of my project, and they all learned quite a bit along the way!

• ✅ write 1-pager invitation letters to my potential academic committee members asking them to serve on my dissertation committee, and send the letters to my advisor for feedback, approval, so she may send them to the committee invitees on my behalf and Cc me. (🤞 and hopefully they have the time and availability to accept! otherwise i have plans b and c, sigh.)

  • invited and accepted on the SAME DAY. so happy!! my advisor asked if they could keep a copy of my invitation letter as a template/guide/reference for her future advisees 💕💕💕

• ✅ prepare slide decks for my dissertation defense proposal and rehearse the hell out of it. schedule said proposal defense/oral exam.

  • i did! i passed! i am ABD!

• ✅ update my docs for the ethics board re: data collection updates for round two of data collection.

  • done!

• ✅ prepare and rehearse for conference presentation: present my preliminary findings at the Big Conference (which includes making sure i got all my grant money!!) done!!!

  • my presentation went GREAT, i got all my grant money, and i got a lot of interest in my research from audience members (including NEW and NOVEL followers completely outside my typical professional circles!!), so i was so happy

• ❓ pick which damn algorithm i will use for my cluster analysis.

  • i think i have…. maybe… THANK YOU SUNSHINE LIV. 💕💕

• ✅ update non-fiction book along the way based on master’s thesis and dissertation study and everything else that cannot fit in an academic paper or journal article.

  • i was so inspired during my conference that i wrote the whole damn first chapter!
    
    

and then later (still on the list!!)!

• prep manuscript for journal article based on the master’s thesis paper once it’s published in the repository and

  • i shall do this over the summer!

• publish a few mainstream articles for general audiences as well, to share some findings with the rest of the world and potentially generate some concrete interest for publisher connections about the ✨need✨ for my book 👀

  • i shall do this over the summer!

• collect new data, transcribe new data, code new data, analyze new data, and write about it 😂😅 / dissertation

  • yep, i gotta do this starting like next week 😂😂😂

some new goals for the summertime

fandom things:

1. finish snow globe

2. get closer to finishing that one night; it will be poetic if i finish it around the time that i defend my dissertation (tentatively scheduled for late February 2025!)

3. post another arc for at the center

professional things:

1. submit journal article manuscript

2. complete data collection (and recruitment, therein) for dissertation study

3. finish 50% of rough draft for nonfiction book

i have all of june, july, and most of august to get these things done!! all of the most expensive and most time-consuming adventures were completed this past month in may (traveling to cancún, family visits), so the rest of the summer is all about sleeping well, staying active, and being productive AF ✨✨✨

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something that i will work on doing over the next week or so is getting my writing trackers updated and my word counts up-to-speed! i’ve been keeping track on various platforms (notes, scrivener) but while i was in the zone of Academic Land i didn’t always have time to open up this site and update the graphs. i shall rectify these figures soon! thank you for your patience, all!

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thanks again, all, and happy writing!

she who is thriving and is entering the peak optimal zone of summertime productivity, and wishes the same for all of you,

kris✨

i have finally opened up my dissertation document (and my non-fic book scrivener file) and must return to the Land of Academia

i know i said in my last post (on jan. 2nd—FOUR days ago) that i was going to go back to work, but then i accidentally wrote another 15,233 words of fanfiction, so. (i mean it, this time.) back to my other passion project!!!!

written january 6, 2024 @ 10:35pm

this post contains the following:

1. chapter update! | snow globe

2. milestone! | 100k words written since august 1, 2023

3. back to the phd grind (for real this time) + goals

before i delve into the “kris is actually working on her doctoral dissertation/master’s thesis paper for her second master’s degree/prep for dissertation proposal defense” topics, here are a final few updates to wrap up the winter break (i.e., fandom extravaganza):

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chapter update! | snow globe

to absolutely no one’s surprise, this two-shot three-shot story is now a multi-chaptered fic with four parts.

On July 1st, the lonely house at the top of the mountain was finally sold.

— In which Jack(son) Overland tries his best to befriend his neighbor, one woodworking project at a time. { neighbors-to-lovers!fic, modern-mountain-living!au }

Prompt from @aicosu: Three-word sentences: "Just say it."

ao3 ❆

part i: bushwhacking grandma (13,282 words | aug. 4, 2023)

part ii: barnyard peasant (11,550 words | dec. 20, 2023)

part iii: Scandinavian woodworking techniques (13,163 words | jan. 6, 2024)

part iv: [coming… later!]

thank you! for all of your beautiful comments, replies, reactions on both of the new chapters! 😭🙏

an observation. i’ve never wrote a fic in which the characters are experiencing time more or less the same way i am as the author (i.e., part i is set and written in july/august and published in august; part ii is written during fall and early winter, then published in december; part iii is written during christmastime and then published right after the new year… who knows what will happen with part iv 👀).

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milestone! | 100k+ words

click the image to visit the official word counter!

on january 5, 2023, i hit 100k+ words written since august 1, 2023! (5ish months)

• (80.13%) fandom: 80,264 words

• (16.42%) dissertation study: 16,448 words (does not include emails, grant applications, grading student papers/peer review/peer feedback, slide decks, or data coding and data analysis. 😂🫠)

• (3.45%) non-fiction/dissertation book: 3,454 words

fall 2023 was a time of data coding, data analysis, transcription, data cleaning, data annotation, peer feedback/review, grading student papers, and many many grant applications (money!!!!!!)

spring 2024 will be a full-throttle academic writing semester!! all my heaviest deadlines for career-related goals and benchmarks are january, february, and march... 💪🥲

between december 20th and january 5th (16 days), i wrote 37,074 words of fanfiction! 😭🙏

(in other words... of all of my fanfiction writing since august 1st... i wrote 46% of those words in the past two-ish weeks during my winter "break" 😅) CLEARLY, I WAS CRAVING CREATIVE OUTLETS for something squishier and freer than my rigidly structured academic register! and now i've left it all on the internet-table lmao and it is time to return to my ✨Professional Voice ✨

(to be fair, another 48% of fandom writing was completed in august, in the final weeks leading up to the fall semester 😂 the other meager 6% remaining percent was scattered throughout the hectic fall semester—to no one's surprise!)

TO THE DISSERTATION/BOOK, WE GO

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back to the phd grind (for real, this time) + goals

here are the things that i must complete by the end of march (though not necessarily in this particular order! 😂):

• master’s thesis (#2/in passing): finish final revisions on my (second!) master’s thesis then send it to my advisor for final feedback (if applicable) and approval, so that i can apply to graduate for my (second!!!) master’s degree for this spring

• prep hiring ad for potential research assistants so i can find my RA for the spring semester (last semester my RA was soo good and i got so spoiled, gah).

• write 1-pager invitation letters to my potential academic committee members asking them to serve on my dissertation committee, and send the letters to my advisor for feedback, approval, so she may send them to the committee invitees on my behalf and Cc me. (🤞 and hopefully they have the time and availability to accept! otherwise i have plans b and c, sigh.)

• prepare slide decks for my dissertation defense proposal and rehearse the hell out of it.

• schedule said proposal defense/oral exam

• update my docs for the ethics board re: data collection updates for round two of data collection.

• prepare and rehearse for conference presentation: present my preliminary findings at the Big Conference (which includes making sure i got all my grant money!!)

• pick which damn algorithm i will use for my cluster analysis

• update non-fiction book along the way based on master’s thesis and dissertation study and everything else that cannot fit in an academic paper or journal article

and then later:

• prep manuscript for journal article based on the master’s thesis paper once it’s published in the repository and

• publish a few mainstream articles for general audiences as well, to share some findings with the rest of the world and potentially generate some concrete interest for publisher connections about the ✨need✨ for my book 👀

• collect new data, transcribe new data, code new data, analyze new data, and write about it 😂😅 / dissertation

and i shall do all of these things while teaching two courses at two different institutions and writing letters of recommendation for my students and writing more grant proposals and doing other university responsibilities

and life! 😂😂😂

thank you for reading and following me on this journey!

i hope everyone’s januarys are off to smooth starts 💖💖💖🙏🙏🙏🙏 i’ll still be on and off tumblr over the next few months, but already i can feel the dissertation-dopamine cravings entering my bloodstream, i.e., suffering but being really happy about it 😉💖

thanks again, all, and happy writing!

she who has actually returned to work-work for real this time and has her diss!doc sitting open and ✨updated✨ in a browser tab,

kris✨

i blinked and the semester was “over”

the semester has ended and all that is left to do is grade students' final papers (due tomorrow) and finish my dissertation proposal so i suddenly thought "perhaps it's time to update my word counter!!" and whoops i wrote 16,558 words over the past month THIS IS WHY I WANTED TO WORD COUNT OH WELL

HELLO ALL 💕

dissertation status:

• i received my feedback (full approval!! qualifying paper = passed!!) on november 1st!

  • on the one hand, the feedback was beautiful and helpful and inspirational and constructive. on the other hand, getting all the feedback on the 1st was not conducive to preparing a proposal defense (paper and slide deck) for the week of november 11th, which would have required formally inviting the tentative members of my hopeful academic committee to actually serve on my committee by sending emails out the week of the 4th… so my advisor was like, “yeah, no, let’s do early spring!” so my dissertation proposal is tentatively scheduled for mid-march and i shall formally invite my committee members to join my dissertation committee in mid-january!

  • this timeline is not the one i’d hoped for, BUT since i already have half my data collected, coded, and analyzed (which is what i’d partially done for my previous paper and what i finished doing this semester with my research assistant), i’m in a funny situation where half my dissertation is already written. so although i would have LIKED to have been “all but dissertation” (ABD) status by now, i’m still on track to defend my dissertation in february 2025. 👌💕✨ meanwhile, my ABD cohort member is only going to start collecting data in january and she joked like, “kris, of the two of us, re: our data collection and analysis progress, who is ACTUALLY ABD here?” and i was like, “you right, you right, i must CALM DOWN.” 😂 january 2024, it is!!

• tomorrow, i have my final meeting with my competent, astute, observant, organized, creative, enthusiastic, quick-learning research assistant. 😭

  • she was so good! i’m so sad that our time together is ending, but i’m so happy to write her letters of recommendation and help her update her badass resumé and see her move onto the next stage of her academic career!! i’m so happy to have been a part of her learning journey and i know we’ll stay in touch as she enters grad school and wherever she ends up next.

  • and NOW i have to find another one for spring. 😂🫠🤞TENTATIVELY OPTIMISTIC.

• the manuscript for my non-fiction book (based on my dissertation research but for a mainstream audience!) continues!

  • i’m so so lucky to have my advisor. all of our advising meetings revolve around three goals:

    • publishing my dissertation,

    • publishing 1–2 academic journal articles on said dissertation topics, and

    • publishing my non-fiction book for gen audience.

  • she is advising on ALL THREE PROJECTS. how would i possibly be able to do any of these things as well as i am doing them if not for a stellar, trustworthy, competent, long-term/endgame-planning advisor?? choosing a university and a department and an advisor is the number one most important part of picking a ph.d. program, i will die on this hill.

on that note, a few thoughts about completing a ph.d. program…

here is what i have learned about writing a doctoral dissertation during the first three or four months of writing said dissertation; some of these learning points align 100% with pieces of advice that have been passed down to me from friends, colleagues, advisors, mentors, and postdocs, and some of these are “things that i thought i knew but experience is the best teacher,” and some of these things are just Unexpected Pearls of Wisdom™ :

• not everyone finishes their ph.d. program. for the first three years of my ph.d. program, i felt like the foreboding statistics about ph.d. program attrition rates (e.g., dropout rates for programs in the u.s. across the fields of engineering, life sciences, social sciences, mathematics and physical sciences, and humanities range from 36–51%, young et al., 2019) was more urban legend than reality—something that happened at other schools to other departments with other ph.d. students.
  
  but as my cohort(s) cross(es) the bridge from “student” to “candidate” and inch closer and closer to “all but dissertation” (ABD) status, i have started to feel the truth in the urban legend: people leave doctoral programs for all sorts of reasons, including personal and professional, which is what you might expect—such as realizing that the current program (/advisor/area of interest/stage of life/etc.) isn’t the right fit for that person at that time in that stage of their career.
  
  i was less prepared, however, for people in my program—friends and classmates and colleagues i have grown close to over the last four years—failing out of the program due to failing their milestone requirements (e.g., qualifying papers, dissertation proposals), even after two attempts. i was not prepared for them to receive termination letters from the program director with heart-wrenching peer reviews on the limitations and flaws in their papers and with the departmental decision that, ultimately, they have failed to meet the requirements for continuing the program. just this past week, multiple friends have been terminated on the basis of a lack of demonstrated capability to complete a high-quality, rigorous, cutting-edge dissertation project that meaningfully contributes to the literature in a reasonable amount of time. it’s heavy.
  
  in the past year alone, i have seen five of my friends and colleagues—from multiple disciplines and areas of expertise—be asked to leave the program or choose to leave the program as 3rd and 4th years.
  
  some have viewed it as an opportunity for a fresh start and a “reset” to pivot to a different lifestyle entirely.
  
  some slip away quietly and avoid all calls and texts and linkedin messages, even a year later.
  
  some go out angrily and bitterly, and, unfortunately, burn down every bridge in the process, creating resentment on both sides, all the while sadly never realizing that the reason their appeal to the graduate school failed is, ultimately, at the core, for the same reasons they failed their qualifying paper in the first place.

• it is REALLY hard to finish a ph.d. program and write a dissertation, and it requires such a unique set of skills, not least of which is “you have to actually want to finish your ph.d. program REALLY REALLY BADLY.”

  so much of my ability to stay in this program and be on a trajectory toward successful completion of my dissertation and program has less to do with having any sort of Brilliant IQ™ and much, much more to do with having transferrable skills, like:

  • high emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills, particularly with faculty and advisors;

  • great public speaking skills and confidence and Presence with which to share my research with Peers and to Network the Living Daylights Out of Everyone, Everywhere, All the Time;

  • exceptional and adaptable and streamlined-to-utter-efficiency organizational skills, and more, of course… but these are absolutely the Top 3, in my case.

• writing a dissertation is actually fun, but only if:

  • you’re fortunate enough to be writing on a topic that means everything to you personally and professionally, and

  • you have a great relationship with a competent and resourceful and expert advisor who keeps in mind not only your academic and professional goals but also your personal ones as well, and

  • you’re really really really really fucking good at taking initiative and keeping track of 1000 tasks at once and thriving in a self-paced, self-driven lifestyle.

• The only person “Who Actually Cares if You Finish the Thing or Not” is you (and, if you’re lucky enough, your advisor), which, again, ties back to the earlier point that one of the most critical factors in deciding whether or not you finish the damn dissertation is “you have to actually want to finish your ph.d. program REALLY REALLY BADLY.”
  
  there are so many other demands on our time, and in order to actually work on the dissertation, you HAVE to carve out time for it. case in point: my poor ph.d. program soulmate is defending her dissertation in february and she has not touched her dissertation since october 31st. it is december 11th. for me, that’s horrifying to think about right now, but it’s so common everywhere. if we are not careful, the dissertation will consistently get pushed farther and farther back onto the backest burner, and suddenly you’ll blink and you’ll not have touched your dissertation in over a month. when i last made a post on this blog in september, it had happened to me for two-ish weeks, and that was scary enough.
  
  whatever i do now, i do my best to TOUCH at least one of my dissertation documents at least once every few days: the slide deck for the proposal oral exam, the dissertation proposal word document, the endless coding spreadsheets, the clickup task management portal for my research assistant’s assignments…
  
  TOUCH IT. TOUCH IT EVERY (OTHER) DAY.
  
  progress can happen in Big Surges of energy and productivity, but more often it happens in small, incremental steps.
  
  enter cliché: a dissertation is not (always) a sprint; it’s a marathon.
  
  enter second cliché: a good dissertation is a done dissertation.
  
  enter existential realization that writing a doctoral dissertation (like many other large-scale projects, other meaningful experiences, and other Hard Things) is a Metaphor for Life. ✨

fic updates!

what fic updates

100% i am CRAVING a fanfic outlet. i have been grading and reading and coding and grading and presenting and my head is full of at least ten relevant academic journal citations at any given moment. i cannot partake in a typical human conversation without saying, or at least thinking, “there’s actually this really cool study about that—” stop. kris stop. STOP, KRIS.

i had to perfect my 1-minute elevator pitch about my research for thanksgiving because anytime anyone asked me about it and, god forbid they asked me follow-up questions, I DID, INDEED, TELL THEM ABOUT IT. INDEED. thank you to all the patient souls at various friendsgivings who asked me questions (and then more questions) because even though i had to REEL IT BACK, i basically perfected my conference presentation pitches and here i am again, this section is supposed to be about FIC UPDATES. FIC.

back on topic: there is a mountain!AU jelsa two-shot requiring its second shot and i am salivating over the wintry “COMPLETION” status update, so that is ✨forthcoming.✨

i have been tentatively brainstorming with the gloriously creative @callimara over a collab 👀✨ i am DESPERATE FOR THAT TO COME TO FRUITION WHILE WINTER IS UPON US.

HOPE YOU ALL ARE DOING WELL THANK YOU FOR READING LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU

happy writing,
♡ kris

doing “everything and nothing”

just some quick low-key panic.

about two weeks ago, i asked my phd program soulmate 'how is your dissertation going?' and she said, “i am doing literally everything and literally nothing”

and i thought, “huh. what an interesting vibe.”

and then IT HAPPENED TO ME AND HAS BEEN HAPPENING TO ME FOR TWO WEEKS

needless to say, i am ready to go back to taking care of my OWN STUFF again this week

and not putting out everyone else's fires!!!

speeches, meetings, emails (oh my)

when the onslaught of emails is so much that you project the experience onto fictional characters

(specifically, the newest chapter of that one night)

the initial start-of-semester race has… calmed?

part of me almost wishes i were actually keeping a word count of the emails i’m sending for academic + work purposes. i wouldn’t be able to sustainably track that kind of data, but i would love to know very seriously how many words i am sending out into the email universe—particularly because i work really hard to make my emails as clear and concise as possible. BUT OH WELL. i don’t dare track that data, so other data points (e.g., papers, book manuscripts, dissertation proposal) will have to do.

dissertation status:

• still waiting for feedback on the most recent paper i wrote! once that comes back to me, i can incorporate that feedback and submit a shorter version for publication (e.g., research journals)

• trained my new research assistant!

• doing a deep, close read of the literature to know everything inside and out (and to catch up on any new articles that dropped in august while i was taking a bit of a break)

• started my manuscript for the non-fiction book (based on my dissertation research but for a mainstream audience!)

• had my first meeting of the year with my advisor and potentially have my official shortlist for the other two members of my academic committee 👀

• currently ✨on track✨ to defend my dissertation proposal in november 2023

website & fic updates!

had a very inspiring conversation with @sunshinemellow-fic over the weekend about writing and revising one’s writing vs. yeeting unbeta’d word vomit out into the tumblr- and ao3-wilderness, which resulted in the opening of 1-sentence fic requests!

after i fulfilled a few prompts, i was like, “oh shit, this moment is probs a good opportunity to start transferring old 1-sentence fic over here.” lo and behold:

• added a new (non-linked) page for 1-sentence fic

• added a button for the 1-sentence fic page to the fanfiction page

• added this week’s newest additions of 1-sentence fics [butterfly, acupuncture] — although you can see i still need to fix the dates

• started adding a few older 1-sentence fics from Olden Times but then once i felt like i got to a good stopping point, i decided to leave the older ones for Later™ (i have to clean up that fic-only tumblr tagging system anyway!). therefore, i will leave this project for a Later™ treat when i need to engage in mindless organization and order 🔥✨

x-posted a tumblr-prompted drabble into ao3 (because we can’t trust tumblr 🥲🫠🙃)

find the woman in white on ao3!

in other news —

• 🍺 many adventures this labor day weekend (many cocktails, many lagers, though not necessarily together)

• 🦋 PURCHASED AMC TICKETS TO SEE THE ERAS TOUR IN THEATERS; this has, clearly, moved up our plans to create 1989-inspired flower crowns and friendship bracelets, i must PREPARE

• 🍇 i picked fresh grapes straight from the vine on vast farmland (and later made homemade grape juice) and now i can never go back to grocery store grapes, what have i done

thanks, all! ♡ and good luck with the rest of your week!!

back to “school”

except my nine years of taking higher ed classes are OVER and i have entered the promised DisserLand ✨

back to school-ish

this week was a ‘soft launch’ back into the semester!!

emails, preliminary planning, prepping for some events… it’s like the calm before the storm, except it’s already sprinkling. 😂

i think everyone just collectively feels like we have to “go back to work” two-ish weeks BEFORE we actually have to go back to work because the anticipation is too much.

also, for the first time in my entire phd career, i actually feel properly rested after this summer (since i took a break from phd stuff for most of august and just focused on making as much money as possible the whole summer through OTHER non-academic channels). so like. I’M EXCITED TO GO BACK?

and it’s so refreshing that i will only need to commute only once every week or so. that’s the main game-changer. i can be excited about going because i will only go so few times this semester, so it’s a TREAT rather than a SLOG.

I AM READY, LET ME GO BACK. ✨ i want to finish this dissertation as soon as possible!!!

writing progress ✨

officially have written more for snow globe this month than what i wrote to finish frosted sea glass! such is the nature of writing two-shots, i guess!

• ✨ it's also very cool to see that on good days i tend to write ~3k words on the days in which i write! i'd never formally kept track before.

• 🔥 on a REALLY good day, i wrote 7500 words.

• 💪 on other days, i squeaked out only like 100-300 words, haha.

• 💤 and then i have let myself take some solid breaks after finishing frosted sea glass. on those days, i reread my favorite fics!

also, yesterday was a bit of a soft launch for me with getting back into the swing of the semester. (i will not, however, count any words written in emails. 🤣🫠🙃🙏 oof.)

you can also follow along with the word count (‘23-’24) tracker! i update it most days!

i’m not sure yet how much fic i’ll be able to write in the next few weeks as the semester ramps up, but i hope to be able to squeak out at least 100-200 words fo writing for fandom each day! a little bit is better than nothing! 🤞

hope y’all are doing well and whatever end-of-summer stuff you have lined up is going well. ✨ happy writing, all!! ♡