Katie's Notes

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

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  • Week 6

    Week 6 became a starting point to complete writing one chapter by this summer. I started using EndNote on my MacBook Pro. I still can’t fully handle it, but I managed to integrate a new bibliography with my old draft. I also started recording my reading diary and summaries with Evernote. There is nothing complicated read more

    Week 6

  • Week 5

    Week 5 was tough for me, but I have taken things positively and learned to take harsh comments. I need to improve how I send a working draft to my supervisors, for example, by revising drafts with tracked changes turned on after accepting supervisors’ comments and clearly leaving my changes about what I have edited read more

  • Weeks 3 and 4

    I have spent most of my time reading journal articles and preparing to teach. For week 4, I completed some compulsory training while continuing to revise my research protocol. I have had the same routine of work and the same kind of food for the last two weeks: ramen noodles with kale and peas. On read more

    Weeks 3 and 4

  • Week 2

    My first week was not very busy except for Tuesday. The first meeting with my supervisors on Thursday went well. I joined a training session and created my teaching plans. I work until 7 pm in the study room at the library, but it gets dark on the streets around 8 pm when I go read more

    Week 2

  • Week 1

    Registration and the induction programme for new PhD students took place this week. There were 20 new students in the Spring semester, seven of them belong to my faculty. One great thing about the new student life is that individual desks, lockers, office facilities, a shower and a kitchen are allocated for us in a read more

  • New Year’s celebration

    We welcomed in the New Year at our friend’s house. I woke up at 7 am this morning feeling good. Although it was supposed to be done the previous day, I made a Sicilian-Japanese New Year’s celebration meal for lunch: grilled tuna with pesto genovese, tamagoyaki (omelette), shrimp tempura, osekihan (rice with red beans) and read more

    New Year’s celebration

  • Christmas gifts

    I missed having the Christmas dinner followed by lebkuchen at my aunt’s house, which I used to have every Christmas until last year. This year, I ordered two boxes of lebkuchen to be sent from Germany to my house in England. The delivery date was supposed to be the 28th, but the parcel came to read more

    Christmas gifts

  • Christmas dinners

    What I realised again as soon as I returned to England was that all of my friends from MA are no longer here. My flatmates and classmates, with whom I spent the whole of my MA period until September, have gone back to their countries. I hope to find new friends soon. Luca is leaving read more

    Christmas dinners