schneefink, posts by tag: university - LiveJournal

Today I officially got my degree! \o/
Bachelor of Science, sounds good. (LB said economics isn't science, but in the same conversation he complained that other people were doing boring math, I told him I'd get him a shirt saying "math snob.") Unlike the old Austrian titles, like Magister/Magistra, it's usually not used as an address, which is a pity but otoh, whatever.
I'm finally done. It feels amazing.

There will be some kind of celebration, but I've been really tired the past few days for some reason so I'm not in the mood to organize anything. Probably just something low-key.
And then next week I'll start looking for a job, exciting.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

Today at 7am I sent the complete first draft of my thesis to my advisor. I don't know if she'll tell me to go back and correct some things or if she'll just mark it as-is, but she said she'll be able to mark it by the end of February. It's not certain I won't fail, but I know my own standards are higher than hers and imo it's not a good paper but it's serviceable.
If I pass, I'm done with my degree.
Whoa.

The weekend was difficult, but in the end I wrote two out of seven chapters, plus summary+intro, plus proofreading and formatting. Quite good. I already had to tell myself several times that asking myself & being frustrated why I couldn't work like this earlier doesn't help. Thank you so, so much for your encouragement and well-wishes <3 Much appreciated.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet that the main part of this huge thing that I've been working on and that's been weighing on me for years is done. I feel a bit weird. Mostly tired.
Now I have time to do things that I put off until February, a few "to do" things but also reading and writing and skating and meeting friends. That'll take some getting used to.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

Last edit, Monday 7am: DONE DONE DONE. SENT. I feel strange, I don't think I've quite realized it yet. Off to sleep.


Sooo, two days to finish my thesis! I had days this month when it went well and unfortunately more than I wanted that were less good. I stayed optimistic for the longest time, but then the last two days were unexpectedly terrible and now I'm... well, panicking is not quite right, but scared is not too far off. I could still do it, but it's becoming harder to convince myself that I'll manage when I haven't so far.
So, more lists, because crossing things off lists feels good, and making it public makes me feel ashamed when I can't do it and hopefully that helps.

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This is going to be a nightmare fun!

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Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

Apparently I'm currently posting (almost) daily. Huh. Maybe because I'm having good days. I think I like it.

I had a good day today. I:
- got up at ten after staying up until 4am to watch the NHL draft, didn't feel exhausted (coffee helped.) I'm trying to change my sleep schedule so I go to bed earlier and get up earlier in the morning, so far it seems promising.
- put on clothes I recently got from my mom & felt very pretty
- bought a paper bag of delicious cherries for study breaks
- studied in the uni library with a friend for a few hours (I was there from noon until almost eight, but only some of that time was spent studying) and made some progress
- saw a rainbow on the way home :)


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Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

The only disadvantage of friending memes and meeting new people is that for a short time afterwards I feel very self-conscious about posting anything. Well, slightly more than normal. I keep telling myself I don't have to be, but that's only somewhat successful.

Today and yesterday were not good days and very unproductive, I spent basically the whole time reading fic. Technically also original fiction, so the correct term would be stories, but it felt more like reading fic than reading books. At least the weather is currently excellent so yesterday I spent half the day sitting in the garden with my ebook reader, it was great. (Today I felt too guilty about procrastinating to sit outside, so instead I sat in my room in front of my laptop and still didn't get anything done.)

Speaking of things I want to get done (i.e. finishing my bachelor thesis), working with data can be SO ANNOYING. Right now I'm mostly working with data from the Russian statistics agency and from the OECD, and both of them are extremely frustrating, for different reasons. Things like "this result is mathematically impossible" (OECD), "wait do you seriously not say where the data for certain countries comes from" (OECD), "I know you deliberately calculate your quotas in this weird way to make the numbers look prettier and it's really annoying" (Rosstat), "why do you have this data for all years from 1999-2013 except 2004, what happened in 2004" (Rosstat) - why is this so much more complicated than it needs to be? Data and where it comes from can be so interesting, but atm I don't have the time or opportunity to look into this so it's just frustrating. That and the fact that I know good data on basically everything I need exists (the RLMS), but I can't access it. (Also analyzing it would probably be too much work.)

This weekend we're planning another Bab5 session, finally \o/

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I'm mostly healthy again, yay. I'm still hoarse and feeling tired, but that could also be because for some reason I keep waking up early, it's annoying. I love naps.

I have enough energy to work on my thesis again, which is good, because I'm way behind. Before I got sick I told my advisor I would be finished at the end of May, that's not going to happen. But I still want to finish as soon as possible. I'm actually not sure what her deadline is, and I'm a bit scared to ask :(

The timing is terrible though, because next week on Tuesday is choir concert and that means this weekend (half of Friday and the entire Saturday+Sunday, plus Monday evening) is choir practice. No time to study. I can't afford that! I need that time. Usually I'd tell myself "who knows if I'd actually study during that time anyway", but I have to, because I'm out of time. And I'm actually almost optimistic that I will be able to: I managed yesterday, and I already got some work done today. My therapist told me to try to use anger productively, I think it helps a bit.

So I might cancel the choir concerts, which would suck. I probably will, I just haven't decided yet. Fortunately it's not my favorite program we've ever sung, but there are still some very cool pieces (Sikuya kuja, Sixteen tons...) Hopefully I'll at least get a ticket for the concert! Bah, watching and not being able to sing -.-

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

For the December meme, a question by ambyr: What are you studying, and why?

I study socioeconomics at the Vienna University for Business and Economics (bachelor.) In short, I wanted to understand how the world works.

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Huh, this got longer than I thought. Posting this a day earlier than originally intended because a) who cares, and b) tomorrow we watch Babylon 5 again! and it'll take me long enough to write about that.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I'm tiiired and I'm procrastinating on going to sleep because my brain is being weird, so have a post full of random things.

Why are people posting Yuletide letters already? It's not a bad idea to start writing them especially if you know that you won't have much time next week, but it's making me feel stressed. I wanted to rewatch Galaxy Quest, finish reading "Barrayar", and go through the tag set to see if I've missed anything... oh well, still some time left.
(A friend got me a copy of Galaxy Quest but in such a high resolution that my laptop doesn't want to play it properly. I really need to declutter it soon.)
I looked through nominations and I was very happy to find some things that had been accepted, & I know what I hope I'll be matched on! Fandoms where I don't want any particular stories myself but would be happy to write one.

I did not stay up to watch the Pens game against Dallas, which was good because Duper :( But he's back on his feet! I watched the new In the Room and grinned broadly the whole time. This team. Olli and Kappy! Sid and Duper! Suttsy and Kuni discussing D-pairings and calling Despres "Desi"! (Did they assume Scuds would play top4? Ahaha Olli is sooo much better.) Suttsy and Duper mic'd!
Islanders tomorrow, I won't watch it live either but afterwards. It'd be fantastic to break the Isles' streak.
(Btw the Oilers are so bad, if they get McDavid it would be terrible and hilarious.)

Today was the first day of a two-day "voice and movement" workshop at uni. Six hours today, seven tomorrow. Sooo tired. But it was ok, some of it very interesting. Debating taught me not to be afraid of speaking to people and to stand comfortably, singing taught me breathing, but presentations and making contact with the audience is something I have less practice in.
I was told several times that I look very strict, huh. I thought I was not smiling but still friendly.

The whole week I was looking forward to watching Bab5 yesterday, but then another friend came to visit too so we watched Star Wars 3 instead (I tried not to look too unhappy about it.) Wow does that movie have a lot of pretty cloud backgrounds and dramatic face shots and people being stupid (also the Jedi philosophy is still very weird.)
I also got LK's excellent salad recipe (completely different from how we usually make salad at home) that I'm looking forward to trying out.

I'm not very happy with the progress I made on my thesis this week, but at least I got my phone repaired and met my new Russian conversation partner. He seems nice, I'm looking forward to it.

There are some things I should get done for debating and some other things that I'm not feeling up to right now, but whatever.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

Today our Russian teacher informed us that this semester our class presentations should be about famous Russians, but not so famous that everyone knows them already, and ideally they should still be alive. My first thought was Alexandra Kollontai because I recently read about her, but then I remembered that I don't want to do more research than I have to for a voluntary class. Which contemporary famous-but-not-too-famous Russians do I already know stuff about? Then I spent the rest of the class alternately talking myself into and out of doing a presentation on Evgeni Malkin.
Pro: I already know a lot about him (how did that happen), I know where to find articles and info, and if I have to fill time I can always show a highlight reel. Beautiful goals.
Con: I should explain to the class why everyone should know this person, but he's an athlete, and that doesn't really seem important enough? Even though the teacher said athletes are fine, idk. Or maybe I'm still weirdly embarrassed that I got into Hockey (RPF) in the first place. (Now that I'm catching up on GK fic I find out that Hockey RPF stole a lot of good writers, grrr.) How do I explain to my friends why I suddenly know random details about NHL hockey players? "The fandom is full of pining and idfic?" I can count the people I know offline who'd understand that on one hand.
Whatever, it looks cool (why are most NHL games so late at night), and "less work" is a pretty big advantage.
(A nice bonus of suddenly being interested in hockey: I watched the Austria vs. Germany Olympia qualification match. Austria lost the game, but won the qualification. I know it's silly, but Austrians beating Germans at sports is always nice to watch. I think it's some sort of national trauma.)

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

It occurred to me today that I should have asked this much sooner: How do you do research for papers? If you have multiple sources (books, journals, printed and online) for multiple chapters, how do you make sure you find the references you need?

In the beginning I used colorful stickers for books, but that doesn't make it easy to find that one specific quote among the thirty or forty stickers.

Then I started making notes on paper, topic + site, which brought the problem that all the sheets were lying around on my desk and it took very long to find the one I needed.

This time I'm making notes on my computer, source + topic + page, and then I made a new document and sorted all the references by topic under the respective chapter headlines. It looks quite useful, but I haven't started writing yet.

Maybe there's an even better method that I'm missing? How do you do it?

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.