I keep a private diary where I record my thoughts and feelings about research, PhDing, academia, and life in general, but I sometimes share a tiny slice of them here. Over the years, some people, mostly PhD students, have told me they read my thoughts. After this, I seriously reflected on the fact that I will never know who visits this page unless they tell me so. So, I became more careful and decided I should explain a bit more what the goal of this page is. (At the same time, I do wonder if I'm too self-conscious about it. But still, I think it never hurts to show clarity about what one is writing. And, of course, this does not mean that I don't appreciate it when people tell me they read what I wrote -- it's a weird feeling that I can't put into words, but I'm glad that my scribbles are, perhaps, useful enough for a few people.)

I want to accurately remember what was in my head during the PhD (well, at least some parts of it), and I realized the only way to achieve it is to write it all down. But why keep a few of my writings public, especially when they are more personal than many other researchers' blogs? Mainly for selfish reasons -- to hold myself accountable, to easily refresh my memory about the older versions of me (e.g., when I was really bad at writing, when I was navigating challenging situations and felt devastated), to have some kind of rhythm as a reminder that I can persevere through the PhD, etc. But, I also thought it could be helpful for others who have a similar curiosity -- I'm always curious about the "behind stories" of other researchers and learn a lot by reading other folks' blogs. I also want to emphasize that these posts are not polished. I don't carefully craft them because the goal is to capture my raw thoughts relatively frequently. * indicates ones that I ended up editing, although I don't make substantive changes. (written in April 2024)