Katie's Notes

An academic blog by a linguist specialising in qualitative healthcare research & medical humanities

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  • The last class of the semester

    I have finished my teaching for the summer semester and was touched to receive a thoughtful gift of tea and cards from my students. Over the past six months, since beginning my language course in January, I have had truly rewarding experiences in class, engaging interactions with students and valuable opportunities to reflect on my read more

    The last class of the semester

  • Outreach sessions

    I delivered five outreach sessions on the Japanese culture and language at a secondary school. A total of 125 Year 8 students joined the session, which was more of an interactive session between us than the presentation style I used last time. I enjoyed all the sessions with the students! I was so impressed that read more

  • Relaxing weekend

    Having read my supervisors’ feedback on my work, it seems I have cleared the first hurdle of my PhD studies! Now I can finally relax a bit. This morning, I read a novel and ironed our 14 work shirts. (After noticing that I was doing housework, Luca started cleaning the whole bathroom.) After ironing, I read more

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    Relaxing weekend

  • Weeks 25 and 26

    I am writing this with an enormous sense of relief. For the last two weeks, since I came back from Tokyo, I have been concentrating on editing my chapter, though it has been a struggle. I finally submitted my work last night at 10 pm. Soon after I sent it, I collapsed on the floor read more

    Weeks 25 and 26

  • Week 24

    On Thursday morning, I flew to Japan and arrived at Narita on Friday morning. I stayed for two nights and left Narita on Sunday morning. This trip was for my family. It was really nice to see them and have dinner together. But my body clock was on UK time. On the inbound flight back read more

    Week 24

  • Week 23

    I had a meeting to receive feedback on my work. My supervisors pointed out a problem with the structure of my draft and gave me a lot of advice. As a result, I need to divide the literature review into two chapters and narrow the key theories to one point each. My supervisors have shown read more

    Week 23

  • Week 22

    I got behind my personal deadline for writing drafts. I was distressed about my incapability to deal with it, and I spent the whole week reading, writing and editing. I can describe my Week 22 as ‘a traffic jam’ caused by work I needed to do for the ethics applications, the research protocol, a chapter read more

    Week 22

  • Week 21

    My ethics applications are nearing completion. I had a meeting with my primary supervisor to get her feedback on my draft of the applications. I also have a meeting with an expert on research ethics next week.   My goals for Week 22 complete the final version of my ethics applications structure one chapter expand read more

    Week 21