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November 23rd, 2022

We had snow this weekend and today is the first day in a long time I have 2 hours completely alone. I'm so happy!

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Christopher Funk

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{6-27-22}

Studying entomology lately. Of course, I had to include the professor’s old lab. Hope everyone is having a productive summer 🤍

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my university campus is so peaceful and quiet during the summer

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coffee + social assistence, and what’s on my desk right now

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morning light ☀️🪴

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safe space 🦇 // @everlinet

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day 013/??? of studyblr stuff

it’s crunch time before I go on a lab visit abroad and home for the holidays, so I need to get as much as I can out of each day. current projects include getting a graphene catalysis up and running, more tests with my thermal transfer press, and try to crank out a prototype of my newest idea.

pictured: a very pretty cappuccino with foam-art leaf; a lovely jungle waterfall from a hike I went on recently; a quick picture of the blackboards from my statistical physics class (I love my professor’s handwriting).

currently reading: many waters by madeleine l’engle

listening to: free yourself up by lake street dive

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what changed to make you decide to pursue science instead of math? is this something you'd been considering for a while?

Just saw my inbox haha, no time like the present to answer this! I will preface this by saying that I had no prior desire to do anything science related— I didn’t take a single AP science class or honors class in high school, I didn’t like any science at all until I took my first earth science class during my last semester of college.

Reason #1: I was really depressed studying math. Things weren’t sticking, I felt like I was hitting a wall with my math abilities and not getting anywhere. The portion of the pandemic where people were willing to stay home & quarantine was really not great for me academically on the math side. When I decided to stop caring about math anymore, it felt like a huge weight off of me, somehow.

Reason #2: I didn’t think the way that I would succeed with the math graduate school structure. I started to only like math when I want I was doing it with others and any time I was doing it alone was painful and took all the fun out of it. I really didn’t believe I’d make it past the brutal qualifying exams process in math grad school. One important thing to note is that I was never “good at math.” And I always felt like “knowing things” didn’t determine your worth as a researcher, but then they made all these exam barriers so that you couldn’t be a researcher if you didn’t pass their hurdles on being “good enough” at math. That’s not to say that my new field doesn’t have a qualifying exam structure (it does), but the programs I chose to apply to had quals that were much more bearable and forgiving than the math ones.

Reason #3: I realized I wanted to make an impact on the real world, instead of being content to do math all day with people I really like (which is what my friends seemed to want). This made me consider applied math, of course, but then Reason #4 happened.

Reason #4: I took an Earth Systems Science class and fell in love in a way that I had never had before.

That’s roughly the progression of my thought process :)

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Hi, I haven’t been on here in a long while so I thought I’d announce that I ditched math to become a scientist and I’m doing my PhD in geochemistry at MIT 🤪 Looking forward to getting addicted to tumblr again, now that Twitter is in ruins

#nameeverynumber #mathblr #studyblr #studyspo #study inspiration #study #studying

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June 8, 2021

I decided to go to the park to read The Picture of Dorian Gray on this lovely day. I’ve been trying to make time for little moments like this for myself.

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June 21, 2021

Happy Litha friends!🌞🌳 Spent the day making dream herb pouches for myself and my roommate and then outside to pick flowers for my room🌻🥰 {mine}

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August 6, 2021

It’s a coffee and antique shopping kind of day. I always drink a vanilla latte with oat milk and cinnamon and a wee bit of honey. So so good!😋 Also obsessed with the binds of these books- I imagine my at home library will have gorgeous looking books like these. {mine}

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Quiet time listening to my classical playlist. If you check it out, lemme know what you think 💕 {mine}

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August 11, 2021

I made a caramel latte for a change and I liked how it turned out😋 Genuinely curious, how do you guys take your coffee?☕️ {mine}