{"id":33508,"date":"2023-06-30T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T04:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/?p=33508"},"modified":"2023-07-03T19:35:09","modified_gmt":"2023-07-03T11:35:09","slug":"a-year-in-graduate-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/33508\/a-year-in-graduate-school\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year in Graduate School"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>by Shameera Nair Lin<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Before starting my first year as an MPhil candidate, I made an active vow to myself, where I sought to document as many memories as possible. When I made such a promise, of course, I had no idea any of these photos would be seen by an audience beyond my Instagram and Twitter followers. In a way, the very quotidian nature of these snapshots encompassing my year resembles the experience I\u2019ve had as a graduate student: chaotic, teeming with new opportunities and a way to explore my shifting identity as a scholar and person, more broadly. As such, here are a few moments where the photos will do the talking, rather than vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul type=\"1\"><li>A series of practical jokes we designed for one another in the English postgraduate office.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"410\" height=\"634\" src=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33511\" srcset=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-1.png 410w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-1-194x300.png 194w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"476\" height=\"634\" src=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-2.png 476w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-2-225x300.png 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Cataloguing all-nighters spent on research<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"568\" height=\"758\" src=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-3.png 568w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-3-225x300.png 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"592\" height=\"790\" src=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-4.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33515\" srcset=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-4.png 592w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-4-225x300.png 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 592px) 100vw, 592px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Joining the HKU women\u2019s football team and losing (happily!) against CUHK<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"756\" height=\"426\" src=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-5.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33516\" srcset=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-5.png 756w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-5-300x169.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Forming lifelong friendships and getting into misadventures with other graduate school peers<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"722\" src=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/2588-20-1024x722.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/2588-20-1024x722.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/2588-20-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/2588-20-768x541.jpg 768w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/2588-20-1536x1083.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/2588-20-2048x1444.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"434\" height=\"580\" src=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-7.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33517\" srcset=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-7.png 434w, https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Picture-7-224x300.png 224w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>There are, of course, many pivotal moments I have simply failed to capture: standing in an emergency ward on New Year\u2019s Day as I attend to a family emergency; monthly visits to the University Health Service where my doctor warns me against overworking; falling in and out of love with my research topic; passing my beginner Cantonese examination; making a breakthrough on my research; realising I\u2019d fallen in love; spending 35 hours playing Hades on the Nintendo Switch; getting COVID and struggling to recover; 2am trips to the office to write yet another 7 pages of my thesis introduction; frantically consulting Google to understand affect theory beyond the basics; wanting Derrida not to be mentioned in one seminar; the funniest photos from the aforementioned misadventures with peers; various research seminars; sitting with peers on a rug until 7am as we contemplate our research and its purpose. Then again, if there\u2019s something I\u2019ve learnt from putting this together, it\u2019s the beauty of leaving many moments to the imagination. And in graduate school, it is the tenacity of your imagination that will see you through, as I have found myself holding on to throughout this journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Shameera Nair Lin Before starting my first year as an MPhil candidate, I made an active vow to myself, where I sought to document as many memories as possible. When I made such a promise, of course, I had no idea any of these photos would be seen by an audience beyond my Instagram<a href=\"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/33508\/a-year-in-graduate-school\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33508"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33596,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33508\/revisions\/33596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}