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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • My advisor got her PhD in England, so I’ve been trying to get her help in navigating this. I specifically want to do a research PhD, so that narrows my choices a little. Something I don’t see mentioned much is networking. I’ve read a few studies that I can see myself doing, so I’m going to reach out to those researchers because my undergraduate research compliments their research.

    There’s an exchange program called Erasmus that will provide a monthly living allowance. I saw another one that offered help with employment after completing the degree but I can’t find it now. That might have been university-specific.


  • A lot of our medications come from plants originally, and there are a lot of plants where I live with medicinal value. Willow is probably the best known because aspirin comes from it, and is very common in my area. The main thing will be teaching them which local plants have medicinal use, how to properly identify the plant (I have a dissecting microscope and a few identification books), and how to properly extract the compound that they want.

    Steam distillation is a really common method for extracting essential oils, and it’s easy to do. Menthol can be extracted from mint this way.

    Some of this is what I’ve learned in uni, but you can get somewhere by looking up the remedy you need in Google scholar with the scientific name of the plant you want to use. USDA plants has really good identification characteristics, so you don’t accidentally pick a toxic copy cat.






  • John Deere and a few others recently paid like 20m to build a diesel tech training center for my university that includes several large vehicle bays and a fuel development lab, with the expectation the students would work for their companies after graduation. It’s starting to look like these kids will be opening their own businesses and ending the cycle of ripping off farmers in the community.

    As a former mechanic with lots of lovely health issues before even hitting 40, I really hope they do work for themselves so they can get out of the grunt work when they are my age and still earn from their experience



  • I’m not in retail anymore, and I never did clothing retail, but working in theater costuming has really changed my ideas. Like, I know I am fat because at my height and weight my bmi puts me well in obese territory. But measuring people a few inches taller has put an interesting spin in my head. I know someone with the same bust size who is three inches taller and now I understand why some “large” sizes will fit both of us even though by size my cup is several sizes larger than her.

    People have been telling me for years that I’m “not fat”. I know they are delusional because of the numbers, but seeing other people with similar measurements does actually put it into perspective.




  • I think you can try both at the same time actually.

    You got an awesome taste from your friends on what clothing design can be. Do you have a theater in your school, or a local professional one? You can try costume design for more of the “this is what it’s like as work” idea. I’m not going to lie, you might even find work as a sculptor in theater, but your background in sculpting will definitely feed your experience as a costume designer or even just in costume construction. So you could spend two years in consume construction as a hobby and decide that’s what you really do, then move into a master program with fashion design.