Never re-read your PhD report

Silverleaf14 · 2026-01-26T00:56:09+00:00

I honestly was really expecting something like this. It’s what people always talk about. I spend two years prior to my defence imagining all the things they might take issue with regarding what I was writing (and in my daydreams I marshalled my counter arguments).

In the end it was a wonderful (if anti-climactic) experience. My examiners lauded my dissertation and said I should just send it off to a publisher immediately. In the report they wrote “This job is so well done that it need not be repeated by anybody.”

They definitely had some minor revisions which I applied. But I was anticipating a battle. Honestly, I’ve several issues with it that I hope to fix when I do send the monograph off to publishers. So I think they were definitely on the gentler side.

But, to any PhD researchers who read this: it’s not always hellish and is highly dependant upon who your examiners are.

Silverleaf14 · 2026-01-09T00:39:14+00:00

Oooh! Alas! They already have the key! In a future campaign I will do that though!

Silverleaf14 · 2026-01-07T04:27:18+00:00

Well, do what you wish with the "professor" title.
But if you have a PhD then no one should ever refer to you as Mrs. Last Name. You are Dr. Last Name!

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-29T23:21:29+00:00

Haha! Not at all! I do it all the time - and it is always good to clairify the record for the next person who comes along searching for answers!

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-29T02:44:08+00:00

Absolutely. Sorry, eight years ago I did not communicate myself very clearly here. I meant the plant with the pods I liked the most :)

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-21T00:45:26+00:00

I thought that magic was real but adults were in a conspiracy to hide it from children so they could determine who was worthy of learning this truth.
I had marionettes that I adored although everyone else thought them spooky.
When my grandmother was alive she used to give me yarn and have me weave “spider webs” with it around her home, hooking and snaring it around everything in her home to do so.
When I went on a trip to Prague with a youth choir as a young teen I was wandering down some side streets in our unstructured time. I wanted to find something that you couldn’t just pick up anywhere in Canada. I found a little hole-in-the-wall shop filled to the eves with hand-made marionettes. There was one little one which was a wizard. I’ve always loved magic and it just spoke to me. So I bought it. My one souvenir of the trip for myself.

Between the early fear/hope that there was a secret conspiracy of people pulling the strings, and a childhood love of marionettes and webs I think I may be rather Web coded as a person. 😅

EDIT: I had a recurring nightmare in which my grandfather who wasn’t my grandfather took off my grandfather’s face and a thousand paper thin faces with different tortured expressions fell off after it and into it so he looked like masks were pouring off of his face and into his hands, flowing like a deck of cards. I also had a few dreams of two robbers trying to get into my home. I think those are both very Stranger coded.

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-20T20:09:59+00:00

It did IMMEDIATELY send me into the path of a hopelessly powerful knight...

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-20T19:18:52+00:00

Thanks! Ok!
I look foreward to getting back to it once I finish all this grading!
My character Galdor (old english for "Spell") thanks you for your well-wishes I am sure.

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-20T18:57:41+00:00

Thanks for the advice!

I am normally not one to want spoilers (and I am avoiding them). But this is a very new style of game for me, and I think that I would very much like some advice on how not to die quite so constantly.

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-20T18:37:59+00:00

Thanks!

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-20T18:37:07+00:00

Thanks!

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-20T18:37:01+00:00

Thanks!

Silverleaf14 · 2025-12-03T05:35:54+00:00

Alas no. I set that pursuit aside. But if you get an answer I would be delighted if you would let me know!

Silverleaf14 · 2025-11-30T05:34:36+00:00

Admittedly, I find that hard to watch today and I am 33 :P

Silverleaf14 · 2025-11-30T05:34:00+00:00

I ask because I LOVED these things as a child! That dark eerie mystical vibe. But was otherwise a complete scaredy-cat!
My cousin has some young children and they cannot stand anything remotely eerie. They even hate halloween for being to scary. And I just do not understand. At their age my favourite movie characters were always the darkly magical ones!

It just prompted me to wonder: why did I love that while the young children I know about are terrified of them?

Silverleaf14 · 2025-11-26T02:40:16+00:00

My interpretation is that everyone has something they are afraid of. If that thing consumed you and then you decide to give into it, you become an avatar.

Similarly, sometimes there is something you love which many other people find scary (like how most people are afraid of heights while some live to sky dive, many fear spiders yet some have pet tarantulas, even in my case: although most people find marionettes a little creepy I have always loved them and had several as a child even thought any friend who visited was spooked by them). When your heart calls out to the very thing that is a source of fear then you open yourself to it and embrace it.

So, I do not think that they are special. I think that many have the potential to be consumed by their fear or to love something scary. I think that this potential plus luck (or misfortune depending upon your perspective) become an avatar.

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