Monthly Reflection

Well, another month as flown by, carried away on the wings of time.² As you³ can tell from the lack of posts lately,⁴ there are many updates since the last time I talked.

Let’s see once again how that compares to the list that I tried to make about things I was excited for this month.⁹

Oof ok. So, I did do the first three of those, but I had already done them by the last reflection. I did not record a song, which is a bit of a shame. As you might guess from the lack of postings lately, last month was not a good month for me in many regards.¹⁴

I’m mostly ready for my upcoming talks, though that’s a brand new development. Yesterday I gave a practice version of the talks to my groupmates, who resoundingly hated the talk. In their defense, I agree with absolutely all of their comments. They mostly boiled down to the fact that a public presentation should be a story that’s somewhat educational. Instead, all that I had was a list of facts.

As a result, I more or less restarted, this time much more focused on collecting pretty images than anything like having a coherent set of facts. After all, it’s far easier to make a coherent set of facts when you have a story than it is to make a story from a set of facts. I don’t think that I have quite enough content yet, though, so I’ll need to think about other ways that I can pad the content. One option is obviously just to add in some more specific facts about what the different kinds of months are?¹⁵

I started hashing out the planning for the talk I’m giving at a real school. It’s for sure happening, which is really nice. I even have a date¹⁶ nailed down, which is great. Other than that, I vaguely know what I’m going to talk about.

All in all, it’s looking like it’ll be a pretty calm month, which will be nice, especially with how hectic my summer was.²⁰ I’m sure that I did a bad job with my goals last month, but let’s see just how bad.

Whoops↩
Someday I’ll learn how to write poetry. Until then, we all get to deal with this↩
hmm who is the you in this situation? Is it potentially future me?↩
this phrasing implies that I expect to have active readers, which I don’t think I do↩
which should go in my yearly goal post ↩
well, office, but close enough↩
for a very, very generous definition of learn↩
I think? The point of the session was a little muddy to me↩
I wrote everything before this on the first, and nothing has really happened since then, so that still works, I guess.↩
I did it on the first! I think I pr’d↩
did that this morning/early afternoon. (it was a long swim time↩
I am ninety percent sure I’ve used the program name in this blog before, but if I haven’t, this will not be the first time. I did it, in fact, last night! It went really well. Without (many) spoilers, there were like seventy people again!↩
depending on Bureaucracy↩
it’s much better now, though↩
idk, I’m really lost and not feeling particularly inspired by anything right now↩
i think↩
real in the sense of a talk that was explicitly asked for and that I have legitimate plans for↩
I should probably prepare something for that↩
kind of? it’s a like “this is what science research is like for graduate students” event at a local high school↩
it says something that giving two talks and two school visits is a boring month to me↩
starting now↩

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I'm just copying my father

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Monthly Reflection

Draft 1