week 6 // fri

I woke up late- at least the library is still nearly empty at 9am so I still get a good spot. Last night I just couldn't really sleep that well, so I stayed up a bit longer. I can't really force myself to sleep if I'm not tired.
Anyway today I will catch up on two lectures and... probably just chill out. If I have free time I can just do anki cards but I'm trying to be leniant with myself.
I can never survive until like 3pm at this point I'm so tired. I just went to condensed matter because I like the lecturer and he said lecturers get sad when people don't show up. ARGHH.
And waking up late throws me off so much. And I have no idea what my group is doing.

week 6 // thurs

Urgh I need to figure out what I'm going to say in today's meeting. I have no idea what the hell this complexity proof is- because its not even a proof. It was nice to go to lectures yesterday- I just forget how slow lecturers talk sometimes.
Over the next week I'll try to get ahead on the project. The presentation will be the first week in march, and the report is due a week after that- which is a month from now. BUT exams are going to be 1.5 months after that so I sort of want to get ahead. Like if I've covered flashcards of all the April exam topics by term ends, then I have 5 weeks of just doing questions and papers for those three exams. Would be kind of cool. Urgh just time planning.

week 6 // wed

Yeah so about that- basically my boyfriend broke up with me last saturday. My friend Marcel made an observation: "quinn, when you're stressed do you just work yourself to death". Probably the case.
Anyway- so my coping mechanism is to wake up disgustingly early and go to the library. I just love those pre-11am library hours of emptiness and silence. I mean in the daytime its quiet too- but there are just people.
I've been skipping lectures again. Still. I just don't want to see poeple. So I need to try and push myself to watch them in the afternoon- otherwise me waking up early to do extra work will be for NOTHING.
As you might be able to tell- I'm not really processing anything. I just hope this doesn't randomly hit me in exam season. I have a while though.

Personal life aside: I was able to get up at 4am so I could get to the library early. Admittantly I took my time getting up. Anyway so even though I need to watch a lot of lectures- I want to prioritise getting information for the group project ready for the meeting tomorrow. I'm struggling with the two Lemmas in chapter XI which I will probably ask about. I want to make sure the rest of the chapter is solid before then. Also I have no idea what everyone else in the group is doing- so I might need to read up on the physical components of quantum computers. Luckily there are actually youtube videos on this- since the finance/tech bros LOVE these really specific areas of physics.
So I could either (1) catch up on the six lectures I'm behind in or work on the group project. I might do group stuff until... half eight- then I could watch all of the Standard Model lectures and go to the lecture. I don't want to go though.
Okay update I caught up completely on lectures- the project stuff can wait until tomorrow. I'll survive- surely.

week 5 // sat

I was able to get up really early, and got to the library very early- thanks a lot to my partner for making sure I don't fall back to sleep. I've done a lot of flashcards today, and it has actually been more stress relieving than stressful to be honest. Year 1 anki cards carried me through exams. Year 2 I still used them but I spent a majority of my revision time working through derivations. I think this year I will use a combination: so when my flashcards have part of a derivation I'll use that as an opportunity to work out the entire derivation. Before I would kind of expect myself to learn derivation steps off by heart: I think this time around I'll be more lenient and still mark them as complete if I get the right answer but have to work it out. If I'm able to keep up a pace, hopefully I can finish my anki cards for all modules by the end of this term- or at least by the end of the first week of spring break. I'm expecting there to be around 8000 cards in total- so quite a bit to work through. I might add more decks so I can have both typed and written notes- but since they will be covering the same concepts it will just be like... filling in any possible gaps. Anyway: then hopefully in spring break I can continue that revision by doing what was really effective last year: deriving the entire module from memory... every morning. It is pretty daunting at first but after a couple of days I tend to improve a lot. Also it's really fun with a whiteboard. One of my friends and I would do a lot of these things together last year- and we basically had each derivation step DOWN. Kind of sick- all the exams where we did that I did really REALLY well. I think plasma will be pretty good for that since it is almost all equations- and they always say "you won't need to derive this... unless I give you steps": this translates to 'learn to derive this since you'll be asked questions on the derivation on the exam... potentially'. Anyway so yeah- I forget also that before term 3 the library is pretty empty on the weekend. It's almost midday and I only see like 5 people around. I'm going to try to finish my anki and catch up on all lectures. Maybe tomorrow will be particle physics day... Also at this point I might actually NEED to make cards again since I'm running out. Usually I make ALL the cards before revising since it is... pretty easy and chill. So I guess I'll save it for when I'm waiting between lectures and there's so many people in the undergraduate room that I wouldn't be able to do any proper work. Or maybe whilst watching something.

week 5 // fri

MAN I woke up and got feedback on my programming assignment HOLY SHIT it was so bad. I worked really hard on it and got the same solution for most test cases. We were told that there are many ways to solve the problem, and that there would be a lot of test cases for grading NOPE. There is no indication of what went wrong. So I was pretty sad about that. I feel better since for the first three assingments I got near-perfect marks, so even if I FLOP the next assignment I will still get a first overall. I guess I'm used to the programming modules always being a free 80-100% so I can walk into exams feeling comfortable with the fact that if they were to go wrong I would still get a first. Which means I can't flunk exams- its not like I do that really. I am also taking extra credits so I can completely fuck up on two modules and they won't affect my final grade at all. I am overthinking a lot. Anyway I started doing anki again and yeah- I was hesitant on getting back to doing anki flashcards since seeing I have 1000 stats flashcards to learn is... Scary. But it's not too bad. I went to plasma physics this day also: the only lecture I attended this week in person. Which was quite nice. For the past week or so I've been ill, and then I started... Idk I just think I've gotten into a bad headspace. My partner also arrived today and he is here for one week. I have a lot of work to do still, but we can spend evenings together.

week 5 // thurs

Today I woke up initially at 2am and got out of bed and was about to make breakfast... Then I realised the time. So I went back to sleep and woke up at like 7, had a slow morning then to physics. I realise now the library was probably still almost empty at 8am but I guess being in physics has the advantage of not having to move to meet my group. We are meeting our project supervisor today so hopefully I can get clarification on what I've been researching.
I need to split out the lectures to catch up on: I also need to study.

week 5 // weds

Apparently I just remembered that due to my Friday clash and that I'm working today, I won't be attending any particle physics lectures this week. Also apparently I had watched two lectures more than I remember so I just need to watch this week's lectures before next tuesday- that is sort of nice I guess. I've made meeting notes for tomorrow- colour coding is very helpful. Because I have questions but I'm not going to be able to explain WHAT I've done so I just colour coded it with blue callouts : what you NEED to know so you can understand YELLOW : my questions. Anyway I am working OPEN day today so time to lie about incoming students. I mean I do honestly enjoy my course, which is a plus, but whenether they ask about "so how many women are in the course" and stuff like that I have an internal sigh. Like how do I say "so most people find campus very safe ect ect but you're talking to one of the most unlucky people at this institution". ALSO my worst fear came true: Michael's group will be watching my presentation. That means he is going to ask the worst fucking questions ever just to try and sabotage me. He is literally a cartoon villain at this point. Fuck this guy. Now I feel somewhat determined to read and memorise the entirety of Nielsen and Chuang back to back. FUCKING BITCH. I will try to watch my plasma physics lectures tonight. It seems like my headache has gone so I can work for a normal amount of time again! :) I was also able to get up early again and go back to the morning library which I loveee. The physics SECRET silent study room is also unlocked again so if I do need to work in the afternoon there is a space for me. Hopefully this begins my revival to make up for not doing much work for the past couple of weeks.

week 5 // tues

Okay so I'm behind on a lot of lectures because I have been ill and getting dizzy when I try to go to them. So I've been catching up today. I feel overwhelmed by that AND having to do research for my group project. I just... struggle to paraphrase how to create universal gate sets without the proofs: because I don't like that. Like "hi we are using entanglement" - show that mathematically! I can't just say 'hey we're doing this for this reason' then not show it.
But my god I've been having so many headaches I can only work for an hour or so then I need to take a break. I know you're meant to take breaks when working but I just... don't... Because I don't need to, or want to! Like for physics if I'm going to spend time understanding something I need to spend... time on it, going through everything and moving backwards forwards through textbooks ect ect. I can't just say "okay I'm going to do this for 30 minutes then the moment I'm in the zone I'm going to stop working and fall out of it". I'm more of a : work for 2-3 hours then take a 30 minute break outside girly 💅.

intro

I have started a place where I can write about my studying and probably just boring stuff along the lines of "urgh I did 5 questions today but I need to watch X lecture and read Y article". This is another place where a website gives the illusion that I'm telling someone about my work- because people do not want to hear about it. Especially not the highs where I'm actually doing well for myself- people HATE that. So expect a lot of rambling since this 90% of my life right now and I have nobody to talk to about it since nobody gives a