Hello @autonomous17 , thank you for this Ask and for your congratulations ^^; that’s really sweet of you!
Well the reality is that I really did want to graduate much earlier (spring of 2020, before any lockdowns were known or in effect). My thesis had been approved and printed in anticipation of that earlier date. The introduction page even mentions that early-Spring date and time. But the books were never distributed. The physical books were just sitting in a bunch of boxes in an office at the hospital, waiting to be handed out to friends, family and colleagues. So, I have to disappoint you that I didn’t technically finish my PhD during ‘these conditions’ xD. That’s a detail for the history books, though. I mean it was still a little bit difficult with my original defense being cancelled, no one knowing what to do (for some time), me refusing to do a defense via Skype, and rescheduling it all the way to the end of Summer. After planning the new date, no one still wasn’t quite sure if it could even happen. The reception and party, which I planned for after the original ceremony, were of course also cancelled. Come the second time I really didn’t want to plan anything big any more. The reason for the latter wasn’t even the pandemic, it was my own mental exhaustion from still having to do PhD stuff even though it had been over half a year that I had moved away from that place. The average reader of this blog won’t be fully aware of how much work went on ‘behind the scenes’. Doing a PhD is (unfortunately and fortunately) not an ordinary job. I spent thousands of hours of my own unpaid free time writing, rewriting, and revising manuscripts, preparing them for journal submission, receiving a rejection the week after, more revisions, submit to another journal, get rejected again but offered a transfer to another journal, receive peer review, answer the reviewer’s comments in the best way I can, resubmit, etc. There were times when I thought that it would be an eternal cycle of writing and revising and that I just wasn’t good enough at writing scientific manuscripts. It wasn’t the case. About a month prior to my defense, to my own surprise, my 5th (and last) PhD manuscript was accepted for publication. It was a happy ending. I do still have a few collaborations running from during my PhD, which should probably end up in publication (and coauthorships) one day, but that’s for another time xD. Also in reference to a certain shark V-tuber, and due to my seeming success in science, I’ll be calling myself an apex predator from now on xD. This diapered apex predator had a lot of help from others but also helped a lot of other researchers in doing analyses.
To comment on the other stuff in your Ask.. thank you for ‘admiring’ my blog xD. You don’t have to, though. I like taking pictures with lots of colour and I’m glad that I can make others happy with my pictures. I’m not so fond of wearing diapers to sleep unless they’re thin diapers. I’m not entirely sure why this bothers my sleep, but it does. If I did, I would still wear pyjamas over my diaper, though. Also when I’m ageplaying, I would usually wear a pyjama over it. I take off my pyjamas for taking pictures, because otherwise no one can see my diaper ^^;;. I have a few adult-sized pacis that I enjoy sleeping with, sometimes.
