Schoolin'

So in my financial state of the union of my old blog, I reflected on a bunch of a random money thoughts in my head these days. Midlife is feeling pretty strange money-wise. Midlife after deciding to return to school even more-so, but I suppose I have always trusted what people say about regretting what they don’t do more than what they’ve done at the end of their lives. So I will aim to continue leaning into that mentality. Today’s reflections are more like the academic stat

When I moved to the UK for my PhD, I imagined the usual academic challenges: the late nights with library books, the conference paper nerves, the precarious funding hustle. What I didn’t anticipate was meeting a weird, nerdy guy who makes life a lot better with him than without him - and how much that would complicate my life after graduation. Now, with just under a year left in my program, my attention has shifted a little from footnotes and interviews to immigration law, p

Last week, I shared the first half of a curated list of scholarships and grants available to Americans pursuing a PhD in the UK. If you missed it, check it out here . This week, we’re diving into the second half of the list, which includes some important caveats: Some of these awards are only available once you're already living in the UK . Others are only open to students in specific years of study, such as the final “write-up” year. And if you're on a student visa, keep in

Starting a PhD is daunting. Starting a PhD as an international student in the UK with no funding? Even more so. Today, I’m going to share my experience of self-funding my drama PhD journey as an American living in the UK. Spoiler alert: my first piece of advice is probably to not self-fund. But, as the first college graduate in my family, I didn’t quite understand all the funding options available. And if I’m honest, I wasn’t sure where to begin. That said, here we are. Self

Welcome to my year three recap of being a PhD student. It now feels like I have always been a PhD student. Was there ever a time when I was not? Was all of that life before a fever dream? Is THIS life a fever dream? I do not know. I reviewed the last two year’s posts and can confirm that sometimes it still feels like I have done nothing, though at the same time, it feels like I am strapped into a roller coaster going full speed. Can also confirm that as far as feeling lost

If you’ve ever wished for a tool that captures the essence of your meetings, lectures, or discussions, Jamworks might be your next must-have app. Designed as an AI-powered note-taking and summarization tool, Jamworks listens, records, transcribes, and highlights the key points of conversations, offering a seamless way to retain and organize information. How I Discovered Jamworks I first heard about Jamworks through a classmate in my PhD cohort. She was a staunch advocate of

Pursuing a PhD in the arts can be an expensive undertaking. Even if you manage to get you tuition covered, living expenses can be pretty costly, and for those of us studying theatre, you'll likely be shelling out a pretty penny for tickets to performances and exhibits too. For American students, the opportunity to study abroad presents unique academic and cultural advantages, but the path can be costly. With tuition fees, living expenses, and research costs, financing a PhD

I’m sitting at a coffee shop taking a break from inputting some interview data in a spreadsheet for my thesis and I’m a little stuck on what to write for my blog post this week. Money has gotten fairly weird for me. I do not feel remotely where I thought I might be by 40, but also I’m not even sure what that sentence is really supposed to mean. I sort of skipped the whole settle down, buy a house, have a family thing. And I don’t regret it. But it often feels like I’m doin

You might ask, what does it cost to get a PhD? And to answer this question, you might find a school you like, look up the tuition cost, multiply it by 4 (or 5 or 6 or 7 or…. sometimes the number of years a PhD may take can be unclear) and go, ah, a PhD will cost me $80k in tuition. Tuition is only one of the number to consider. And it’s probably the only one with a really clear calculation. And even that’s not clear. Most people are funded when they get a PhD. Or they ha

On February 2 nd I crossed the two year/half way mark in my PhD program. So it seems like time write a reflection piece on year two of the whole process. Going into the whole thing, someone was telling me about the overall process and they warned me the second year is the worst. It’s like being lost in a forest. Fingers crossed that was accurate, since it was not great but it is now over. February 2023 I finished up last year’s post here, but to recap: I applied for some

If you’ve been following for a while, you know I’ve been a stage manager for most of my working life and that I am currently working on a PhD in drama. While I’ve talked a bit about how my PhD program works, things I did to get accepted, and plenty of moaning about the financial life of full time students, I haven’t said a whole lot about what I’m researching. Speaking of, if you’d like to know more about the nuts and bolts of applying to a UK PhD program and life in one, y

I have spent a lot of the last year complaining about my finances as a PhD student, but not much time talking about actual life as a PhD student  - so today’s post is a review of what my first year as a theatre/drama PhD student has been like. It’s been a fairly strange journey. There are times when I feel like nothing is really happening, but as I’m reflecting on the last year, I have actually done a fair amount. To graduate, my school has two requirements – successful com

Between the recession and being right in the middle of this (possibly insane) decision to get a PhD, I have been dealing with more financial uncertainty than I'm used to. Every once in a while, I scroll through my old accountability updates and try to remind myself that I've weather periods of uncertainty just fine in the past. Overall, I have found my career choices in stage management highly rewarding and fulfilling, but I never love these periods of uncertainty, even more

Leading up to my first week of school I spent hours Googling, trying to find an answer regarding what my first few days or weeks as a doctoral student were going to be like. I didn’t find much. A few posts, largely from scientists (a massive amount of information out there is geared towards STEM students), but nothing to give me a clue about what my days as a drama student were going to be like. I sort of get this now because everyone’s days are different, especially in th

When I was an undergrad, I had a really awesome design professor and I thought he had the best job. I went to a very small school that had two full time professors (the acting/directing professor and the design professor) and a contract lecturer (management). The two full time professors split teaching the history, literature, theory courses and then covered the rest of the required curriculum in their area of specialty, because of that, the classes they taught rotated a lot

We’re back with another episode of Inside the Artist’s Wallet. For those of you joining us for the first time, Inside the Artist’s Wallet is a YouTube collaboration between me and Stefanie of The Broke and Beautiful Life where we talk with artist’s who are living the dream and not starving to death. If you missed it, you can check out our first series featuring Patrick Judd here . Today we’re starting a new series featuring Kitty Ostapowicz, an aspiring television and movie