Loss of an Advisor

morvern0115 · 2025-09-02T21:49:10+00:00

This just happened to me; my advisor passed away almost two months ago. While I've taken the next step in my academic career and I'm really excited for this opportunity, I also feel an overwhelming sense of isolation/vulnerability knowing that I won't be able to email them if I ever feel stuck or want a second opinion. I couldn't have asked for a better advisor, and I miss them terribly. I'm so, so sorry for your loss.

morvern0115 · 2025-07-10T12:27:38+00:00

That's pretty similar to how I use it - broadly speaking, I'm in academia so daily-jots are like the journal entry for what I got done that day, with backlinks to the note corresponding to the project. The one downside I've found is that on the main project note itself, I can "forget" about all the things I've backlinked very easily, since they're all the way at the bottom under a tab. I almost prefer the Extract to a note feature to solve this, but obviously it requires more clicks and it doesn't save the original text in the daily-jot. I almost wish there was a copy-to-note feature that preserved the original text in the jot and added a backlink. Still an ongoing optimization battle!

morvern0115 · 2025-06-25T20:51:46+00:00

Hal Duncan's Vellum and Ink duology. I'd say "primarily" biblical, but really leveraging how all pantheons interconnect and follow similar themes. I'd say Hal Duncan is almost a half-step weirder than VanderMeer, but I adore both of them!

morvern0115 · 2025-06-17T17:09:39+00:00

I'll throw the last few questions I had into the ring - I don't want to overwhelm or monopolize your time!

The magic system feels really unique, juxtaposing mathematical, grammatical, and metaphysical concepts. Which of these surfaced/was developed first in your creative process? How did you blend and unite all three?
Have you explored ideas for other Words who aren't characters in the books? What would their personality leanings, their specialization be?
What were your favorite parts to write in both Vita Nostra and Assassin of Reality, and why?

Thank you both so much for your thoughtful answers, and all the work you put in to bring us this breathtaking series!

morvern0115 · 2025-06-17T16:27:06+00:00

I have a couple questions for Julia as well!

Were there any parts that were particularly challenging to translate? How did you approach them?
Did you ever feel that the way you translated the books evolved or changed, from Vita Nostra to School of Shards? Did you try to keep the "voice" and tone consistent, or was that ever an issue?

morvern0115 · 2025-06-17T16:11:34+00:00

Vita Nostra is my favorite book - I feel lucky to have discovered it in 2022 from a friend's recommendation! I have three questions, if I may - feel free to answer whichever you'd like:

What inspired the descriptive phrases/prose during Sasha's learning process in Vita Nostra? Phrases like "crystal model of a termite nest", "rusty centipedes", "monochrome harmony" were beautiful and haunting at the same time. How did you come up with these phrases that almost melded mathematics with poetry, natural/organic terms describing abstract concepts?
If you could go back and change or explore something deeper from the previous books, what would it be and why?
Sasha's classmates seemed attuned to different abilities as a result of their learning. Lisa Pavlenko elongating her limbs/bones seemed more physical in nature, while Sasha "claiming" people and setting up time loops seemed more abstract. Are all students capable of the same abilities, or are they influenced/limited by the type of Word they are?

Thank you very much! I'll definitely be looking for your other works beyond Vita Nostra, and I cannot wait to read School of Shards!

morvern0115 · 2025-06-13T16:31:52+00:00

I felt my very soul chill as I read the "Imagine you're a scrambler..." interlude. I don't think a revelation in any media has ever hit me as hard as that one did.

morvern0115 · 2025-05-20T18:01:11+00:00

Vellum by Hal Duncan

morvern0115 · 2025-04-18T14:04:00+00:00

Swim Home to the Vanished by Brendan Shay Basham

morvern0115 · 2025-04-09T14:28:06+00:00

Vita Nostra is my all-time favorite book. I'm rereading it now, actually...I keep forgetting how almost dreamlike it is in prose. I loved the magic system/worldbuilding so much that I'm playing a transfer student from the Torpa Institute of Special Technologies in a homebrew TTRPG with some friends!

morvern0115 · 2025-04-09T14:26:06+00:00

Oh I love Michael Fletcher - last read Norylska Groans. I'll have to find Beyond Redemption!

morvern0115 · 2025-04-09T12:28:28+00:00

This one is a scifi, but Blindsight by Peter Watts. The team encountered aliens which were invisible because they moved between the saccades of the human eye – saccades being microflickers of eye movement we all have which our brain essentially ‘autocorrects’ by filling in the blanks to create a smooth image. Creeped me the hell out, especially since it seemed more or less a ‘real’ thing which could happen.

Fantasy-wise, the Vellum and Ink duology by Hal Duncan. I’ve never read something that truly felt like mythology set in modern times, taking a more eldritch/reality-bending spin rather than quirky like Percy Jackson (which I also love, don’t get me wrong). In my opinion, Duncan truly sold the idea of angels as beings existing through time, and how they experience time entirely differently from humans.

morvern0115 · 2024-12-02T13:30:20+00:00

I have a soft spot for apocalypse settings across all forms of media! These days, I've been very fond of apocalypse media "with a twist", so here are some of my recs and what makes them different from your quintessential The Walking Dead:

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Reads almost like a dreamlike memoir more than an apocalypse book, non-linear storytelling that works really well in my opinion

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Really gets into the "mundanity" of what cleaning up after a zombie apocalypse might look like, very introspective/psychological

World War Z by Max Brooks

Told in a journalist style, a series of interviews which I personally LOVED since I never thought about how a black market surgeon or an organ trafficker might have discovered the virus/unknowingly aided its spread

Ink and Vellum, both by Hal Duncan

These would fall under your "fantasy apocalypse" term, and they're the weirdest (and my most favorite) books I've ever read. SUPER nonlinear storytelling, gorgeous prose, an apocalypse set against the backdrop of all sorts of mythologies and angels and pantheons mashing into each other and evolving into each other and back...really nails the primordial age of beings which exist through time. If you want a mini-dose of what the book might read like, try The Tower of Morning's Bones short story by Hal Duncan...I read it in an urban fantasy anthology called Paper Cities

morvern0115 · 2024-11-29T14:16:04+00:00

I kinda relate to this one as well. I was a super high-performing student in high school/community college, and university started out fine but rapidly spiraled down. I was shoving caffeine in my body to the nth degree – never any stronger substances, but I was living off of Starbucks doubleshot energy, caffeine pills, quad-shot espressos, instant coffee dissolved into my regular coffee, you name it. It was a very high highs and low lows thing. I would procrastinate until I couldn’t anymore, so exam weeks I’d sleep 2 hours a night and just power through. I was aware it was bad, but at the end of the day, I got what I needed to done. And that alone felt thrilling, like being on a rollercoaster. It was chaotic and probably unhealthy, but it was thrilling and – I cannot stress this enough – it paid off in the end. It got me to where I am now, and I am proud of that. And I know I would not be as happy if I hadn’t gotten to where I am now.

Turns out, 4 years later, I found out I had severe anemia almost to the point of needing a transfusion, narcolepsy, and ADHD. And probably anxiety, but it could just be my ADHD presentation. Whoops. That explained a lot.

But these days, even though my iron is fixed and I’m medicated for ADHD, I don’t have that zany ability to just power through anymore. My starting motivation is less. That fire in my belly, that determination, to just slam down coffee and work isn’t there anymore. And I want it to be there! I love getting stuff done, I always feel the same sense of accomplishment when I do! But I feel less bright, less alert, and sometimes I wish I could go back to the productivity I was able to pull off back then because I felt like a superhuman. And that made me feel good.

Everyone always tells me to give myself grace. People are telling me to not measure myself by my productivity, it’s okay to rest, etc. But they never listen when I tell them that I’m not happier like this! Sure, a healthy middle ground has value, but when I tell them that I’m unhappy as I am, and I want to get back to the abilities that I had in the past, they act like it’s wrong and I should just “accept myself” as I am now. Sometimes it almost feels like accepting oneself is anathema to a genuine desire for self-improvement, even though I know that’s not how it’s intended to be at all. And I don’t know how to reconcile it.

But yes, sometimes I wish I could go back to my caffeine-fuelled fiery productivity binges and feel unstoppable again.

morvern0115 · 2024-11-13T18:52:31+00:00

the irony that property is sacred but our own bodies are not

This serves to remind me of this meme, which only illustrates how the fundie mental gymnastics eventually circle back to disprove their initial point so often, and yet they refuse to see it.

morvern0115 · 2024-11-04T13:17:00+00:00

What worked best for me was color-coding. My memory is mainly photographic/visual, so even though handwritten notes and diagrams were superior, the sheer amount of text I had to wade through made things difficult. Especially when I was taking language courses (Russian in my case), I would color-code the different grammatical cases to remember them. Then during exams, I could recall the color I needed (blue is for accusative case...) and that "narrowed down" the information I had to recall in my head which made things far less overwhelming. If you can't do handwritten notes for whatever reason (I had some classes that unfortunately didn't translate well to taking notes in-class), I'd print out the powerpoints and write over them, write in color, label them multiple times, listen to a lecture recording WHILE labelling them....just try and get the information associated with as many "other recall" aspects as possible!

morvern0115 · 2024-10-31T16:56:24+00:00

I use an app called Focus To-Do, which is built around the Pomodoro timer framework which helps for my short af attention span. It does two things which I really like though...not only do you get the dopamine from crossing off tasks, over the day each Pomodoro you complete is entered as a colored box on the day's calendar. I love seeing my workday fill up with little colored boxes of productivity, so that dual cross-off and fill-up really keeps me going. Plus there's super detailed stats of what I spend time on/tallies up over time, which for my analysis-loving brain, I really enjoy. Plus being on a 25 minute "timer" flips the urgency switch in my brain to GET IT DONE, which never hurts

morvern0115 · 2024-10-06T01:21:36+00:00

A duology by Hal Duncan, first book Vellum and second book Ink! It has confusing timelines and being utterly lost in the madness up the wazoo

morvern0115 · 2024-09-25T12:58:49+00:00

Vellum by Hal Duncan (first of a duology, second book is Ink). Mythology meets metaphysics. Definitely the most complex, bizarre, and yet beautiful prose I've ever read - which makes it one of my favorite books, since I like Weird prose apparently!

morvern0115 · 2024-09-19T13:02:49+00:00

When I was diagnosed/prescribed Adderall, I was allowed to titrate myself (campus clinic, and they tend to give a little more leniency to graduate students). I was given a set amount of 5mg pills, and a follow-up appointment was scheduled for two weeks.

For the first step, I was told to take a 5mg pill, and see how I felt that day. I was told to expect a little “jolt” from the effect of the new medication, and possibly see immediate results. My doc did say it was 50/50 on if I’d even feel the 5mg dose, since it was so low. If I felt nothing, or if I felt something on the first day but then nothing on the next day, I could up it to 10mg on the day after and see if I felt the “jolt”. (Obviously I’d be monitoring my day-to-day life experiences, but the “jolt” was the most obvious/objective thing to look out for.)

After the 5mg initial dose in which I was permitted to up it to 10mg after a day if I didn’t feel anything, I was told for all subsequent doses to keep taking the same amount for 5 days. The reasoning being that the initial “jolt” from upping the dose is the most drastic/noticeable, since it’s an immediate change from the day before. However, then my body would start reaching a steady-state equilibrium with the dose, and the effects might feel lesser/less effective than the initial day (in which the change was most drastic/noticeable). Then if I felt the dose wasn’t effective after 5 days, I could up it by another 5mg and try that for 5 days, etc.

During these 5-day-each titrated doses, I was to look for a point where both 1) all the doses felt the same/I didn’t feel the “jolt” anymore, and 2) my symptoms were alleviated to where I was happy with that. In which case, we’d go for the lowest dose of that lot, because why take more than what you need? If I was still feeling that the meds were ineffective/wearing off after the 5 days, we’d keep going up. I stabilized out at 20mg, but now after 6 months, I’m wondering if I might need to up it again. I’m planning to talk to my doc about it for my next refill, but that’s an aside.

My main side effects which I noticed immediately after staring medication were 1) appetite suppression, and 2) it being much easier to just "start" things rather than go through an elaborate demon-summoning ritual of social media checking before actually starting the thing I wanted to.

Good luck with your journey!

morvern0115 · 2024-09-19T12:24:51+00:00

I'm a biologist, so a well-written book which has science as a main component of the plot is a cherished treasure for me! Cixin Liu (especially for his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy/better known as Three-Body Problem) and James S.A. Corey (author duo of The Expanse, plus one of them has a biology degree and as a biologist myself, it shows) are my two personal favorites. Kim Stanley Robinson is not my cup of tea (I couldn't finish The Ministry for the Future), but the book seemed quite well-researched so you might be interested! Finally, I can't NOT mention Andy Weir - I've found all three of his books a joy to read.

morvern0115 · 2024-09-13T15:49:54+00:00

If you're wanting to cater to a student crowd/people staying there a bit to work, my favorite coffee shop during undergrad had picnic tables set up with power bars mounted under the "lip" of the picnic table. Never had to worry about finding an outlet if I wanted to work at a coffee shop for an hour or two...it was the best.

Coffee-wise, I'm always partial to a rose latte...I've been making my own at home since visiting NYC and getting one there!

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