This FEELed Note was written by FEELed Lab administrator Julia Jung.
I’ve been feeling weirdly nostalgic this summer. Even though this is only my second full summer here it has felt like the end of an era. I am no longer introducing myself to people as “having just moved here” and something has shifted in my perception of time and life here.
Nine months ago, when I was preparing to write my first written comprehensive examination, Astrida said to me that there aren’t many big milestones within the expanse of doing a PhD, but passing your comprehensive exams is one of them. I passed my comps two weeks ago (yay!) and yet am grappling with the simultaneous constant endings and beginnings.
Last week I came across this sticker in a newsletter from Britchida, one of my favorite artists. Their painting captures my current sentiment so well:
For one of my written comprehensive exam essays I created many collages like the title image of this post using images of the Ocean Image Bank. As an homage to that and Britichida’s sentiment, I created a slightly adapted version of their painting.
I want to feel them all – all beginnings and endings currently swirling within me and that encapsulate this moment of 2 years at the FEELed Lab and life surrounding it:
Endings
My Comprehensive Exams (yay!)
Review period of our “Climate Justice Exquisite Corpse Project”
Summer
The part of my sense of self-image that sees myself as new in BC
Biodiversities of Gender Project & Beyond the Desk
Friends who started their Master’s in IGS with me finishing & leaving
Beginnings
Writing my thesis prospectus & starting my own research
Analysis, writing & sense-making & exhibition-planning phase of this project
Fall
Perhaps feeling more ‘arrived’ and having built relations with this place
New projects & schemes, visiting scholars & artists
New friends, friends moving back, reconnecting after time apart
And of course – apart from Endings & Beginnings things also continue! I am grateful for getting to continue as a TA for 304 – Place-based Methods for Interdisciplinary Research (aka the POND class), grateful to get to continue living in the little house I’ve been living in, and continuing to see the Ospreys circling at the beach.
The FEELed lab 