Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

I am reevaluating my life.

I bought a couple of used books today, fixed the earphone jack on my iPod, and went for a long aimless walk.

Ending up in Trinity-Bellwoods park in the afternoon, I assigned myself a project of talking to strangers. One trick is that people are almost always cool with you speaking directly to their dog. Dogs are pretty easy to win attention from, and it’s natural to segway from that into a discussion with a dog owner about their dog.

Part of me wanted to just blast familiar sound through noise-isolating headphones, but the prospect of having conversations with strangers had particular appeal while trying to combat with alienation of graduate school.

Over the span of a few hours, I had some kind of conversation with at least fifty strangers. A lot of it was about dogs, but I also met people making major life decisions, people with philosophical reflections on their life choices to date, one young man with several scientific toys and a fondness for the conservation of angular momentum, an aspiring welder, and two self-identified addicts who thought I look nothing like a police officer despite my hiking boots.

Early on, I met two actors practicing a sword-versus-dagger fight which will be part of a play performed on April 30th at the Revival Event Venue between 6pm and 9pm.

Maternal visit concluded

I spent most of today working on the theoretical framework for my forthcoming proposal, but this morning I went with my mother and some of her friends to see Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum.

Also, I took a break in the evening to try yoga for the first time in Massey’s Upper Library. It was quite challenging, both because I lack the balance and flexibility and because my injured wrist cartilage had a tough time with all the ‘downward dogs’. Still, something worth trying again, especially if I can’t return to Judo.

Thesis update

I went into my thesis proposal presentation on Tuesday with the hope that it would meet with general approval and that I would soon be moving on to seeking ethical approval and beginning research.

Things have worked out dramatically differently, and I am now engaged in an intense effort to write an entirely new proposal on campus fossil fuel divestment — this time, fully structured around a particular theoretical framework from the literature on political science.

Grad school in March

Today was both an illustrative and exceptional day.

Breakfast was my standard porridge of kidney beans, quinoa, and mixed frozen vegetables, with a Whole Foods avocado as a bonus and topped with nutritional year and Sriracha sauce. I got a large coffee on my way to my research design class at Trinity College, where my fellow PhD student Erica Rayment presented her research proposal on the effects of women members of parliament on parliamentary discourse and gender policies.

Then I spent the afternoon reading at Massey College, in the welcome and recently unusual company of my friend Aldea. Having come across a reference in a paper on fossil fuel divestment, I dashed across the snowy street to Robarts Library to pick up first one and then a trio of books on universities that divested from apartheid South Africa. I was pleased to see that more universities are divesting from fossil fuels.

At five, a large group of junior fellows assembled in the common room to toast the election of Benjamin Gillard as Don of Hall for next year. It included a few friends who are rarely seen around the college these days, a few also in their fifth and final year of the fellowship, and lots of those who have become fellows in the last few years.

I won’t be attending tonight’s intermediate Judo class because my wrist is still injured and painful, but there is a talk my friend Katerina organized on the “The Hype & Hope of Artificial Intelligence” and I have no shortage of thesis reading and writing to do in the lead up to my own presentation next Tuesday, hopefully with departmental approval and ethical clearance to follow soon after.

Academic agenda

I have assembled a pretty comprehensive to-do list for the next while.

I have assignments to grade for the environmentalism and social media course where I am a teaching assistant, and a coordination meeting with the other TA. Tomorrow, I am doing faculty and PhD student portraits for the department of political science. Saturday we are interviewing potential housemates, there is the U of T Judo annual general meeting, and I am performing a sketch with Trevor at Massey’s ‘Tea Hut’ talent show.

Most importantly, I am working toward a set of targets for completing my PhD proposal on campus fossil fuel divestment. By the 28th I am to submit the literature review and hypotheses. Then, select and justify case studies by March 8th, finish up methods by the 15th, and present the essentially finished proposal to my research design class on the 21st.

On May 5th or 6th I am presenting on Canadian climate change policy at the U of T Ethics Centre Graduate Conference, and I need to have my paper on Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipeline ready for the Canadian Political Science Association conference by May 23rd.

Governing council elections

My friend Amanda Harvey-Sachez, who played a central role in the fossil fuel divestment campaign at U of T, has just been elected to the university’s governing council as one of two representatives for full-time undergraduates.

Unfortunately, the student members are constrained in how they are allowed to participate in the council. Notably, they cannot add items to the agenda.

It’s interesting to see that graduate students from Physical Sciences and Life Sciences seem to vote a lot more than those from Humanities and Social Sciences. The physical and life science representative got 380 votes in a race of five people. The humanities winner got 88 votes in a race between six.

Winter lows

I haven’t been doing especially well in the last little while. To begin with, I don’t feel like I am making adequate progress on the PhD project. Also, my wrist continues to be quite painful — to a degree that impedes returning to Judo. It has been illustrating the degree to which Judo had become an organizing and de-stressing force since September.

It’s not easy to identify every factor contributing to this malaise, but the effects are evident. It’s especially self-defeating in the case of the thesis. Waking up every day full of anxiety about lack of progress doesn’t serve the aim of making progress. I can also sense how I am even more anxious and irritable than usual, partly because of how I see myself responding to minor issues (like my coat rack collapsing, leaving me with far more coats than wardrobe space, and thus a room strewn with random garments).

I know the appropriate response is to focus on self-care, but that can feel self-defeating too — like choosing to relax for a while in the hope that it will make you so much more productive in the near future that you end up ahead.