Life with Cara

September was a great month for reading! Of course, this sometimes came at the expense of doing actual work... But reading is a very productive form of procrastination for me and I love devouring a new novel. I also really enjoyed some of the non-fiction books I read, which is pretty out of the ordinary for me! Here's what I read this month: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher This is a novel presented in the form of a collection of reference letters that the (fictional) professor has written over the years. It was hilarious and touching, and I found myself rooting for the students and especially the prof. You hear about his messy divorce and subsequent romantic failures, a tragic incident involving his favorite student, and the ever-present beef between the Creative Writing and Economics departments. I found this book from a post on PhD in Clothes , and I look forward to reading the other books she recommended as well. Definitely pick up this book if you're interested i...

 Hi everyone, welcome back to my little corner of the internet. Over the past year, I have graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and begun my journey as a PhD student! I'm remaining at the same school, but the whole COVID situation means that my life looks a bit different now than it did last year.  Things that have changed:  I bought an electric bike and I've been riding it to school! I really like it - it makes riding up the hill to my house feel just like riding on flat ground. I haven't been late to class yet and I've only caved and asked Tim to drive me to school once. My research focus is completely different. For my PhD, I'm studying a method of transforming mine wastes into concrete, specifically the durability of the resulting concrete material. I don't have a lot of experience with this yet, so I've been reading lots of papers lately and studying up! I got to tour the lab I will be working in, and might get to see a demo of th...