columbia PhD explains: things I wish I knew when applying for phd 

aww many thanks for watching and for the kind comment!! I'll just double check with my PI that I'm allowed to post my finalized grant on RU-vid hahaha let me know if you have any other video ideas that you would find useful while you're applying for graduate programs!!

@@bianca.phdinprogress if you have any experience with peers within your program maybe you could make a video on how to like effectively maximize group effort because that's what I'm worried about😅 I tend to be super outspoken and type-A or completely meek and helpless and finding a common medium between the two would be helpful

that's a great idea!! my cohort is 16 ppl so soft socials skills are really important, but most STEM majors are severely lacking in that department HAHA.

So glad to hear that!!! Let me know if you have any other suggestions for video ideas!!

aww thank you for the kind comment!!! if it was helpful, please share it with anyone else that you think could benefit from watching :)

So happy that it’s helpful!! Hopefully you stick around for my new videos! I’ll be posting one this weekend about how to interview effectively and another one next week discussing the competitiveness of PhD programs!

wow, that's crazy!! how did your applications go?? a PhD in linguistics sounds so interesting but super challenging!

I wouldn't say I'm smarter than you! my post doc told me that the ppl that complete their PhDs aren't necessarily intelligent, they're just too stubborn to quit HAHA. thank you for watching!!

aww thanks for the lovely comment!! glad the video was useful :)

hehe I’ll still be learning!! Just taking it more slowly! Was thinking about making a Chinese progress video every other month just to keep that going! thank you for always watching and commenting such lovely things :))

@@bianca.phdinprogress If you don't mind, I would have some advice. I know from experience that you only think of finishing and getting a title now. However, in my opinion, the most essential thing if you want to stay in academia is to keep in mind that you need the following project proposal after your PhD.

I use luma fusion to edit and make all the animations myself on procreate!! I have some screen cap videos of me making the animations if you think that would be interesting to show!! Luma fusion is nice because it's cheap and a one time cost. It does get a little glitchy at the end of a video with the amount of editing I do, but it's not the worst. My editing style isn't super complicated, just requires a lot of text, zooms, and animations! For the static animations, I just use a reference photo (mostly memes) and draw the outline multiple times (it gives the appearance of it moving). For the dynamic animations (aka eyes bulging or arms moving), I look at a reference photo and draw the outline of 3 key frames (going from point A to point B to point C). Usually the reference is point B. So if I were doing an eye bulging animation, point A would be a super tiny eye, point B is similar to the reference, and point C is the eye getting cartoonishly big. That's the boundary of the animation. Then I just make the intermediate outlines and you have a fairly smooth animation! Usually each dynamic animation is around 10-12 frames. But if you notice, I'm choosing to make only 2 or 3 parts of the drawing move. I'm not an animator by training, so everything is self taught, which limits how detailed my animations can be!! thanks for watching!!

@@bianca.phdinprogress wow thats so cool!!!! I didn't realize you had to create them all yourself. Thanks for the detailed instructions I'll definitely look into it because your animations really add to your videos. And if you do have any screen captures of your process of creating them that would be super interesting to show

@DivineBre I’ve actually decided to upload sped up versions of some of the animations as shorts!! Unfortunately I didn’t screen record some of the earlier ones 🫠 but I’ll record new ones I make! I have to condense 2+hours of drawing into 1 min for shorts though, so maybe I’ll upload a slower version if that’s something you think could be interesting!! Thank you for the comment and the idea for animation behind the scenes! :)

@@bianca.phdinprogress i really needa catch up T.T but at least that's what i got these next 8 months for... BrAiN rOt AnD lAnGuAgE gRiNd. anndd.... possible youtube channel :o

heh thanks for watching :))

thank you for the comment!! I made a community post if you want to read in more detail, but I'll be mostly posting graduate school content now. I have very little time to study mandarin while doing my PhD, so it felt pretty disingenuous to continue to post language learning videos. if you're interested in this new type of content, then stay tuned for new videos! if you're not interested in this type of content, then thank you so much for watching my language learning videos!! really appreciate it :))

​@@bianca.phdinprogress Will you be leaving up your old Website biancalearns, Please don't take it down or your old videos on Mandarin.

Yep!! I’ll be leaving everything up!! So no need to worry about that :) thanks for watching and utilizing those resources!! c:

@@bianca.phdinprogress Thanks very much, Do you still have Patreon?

I stopped it awhile ago because I wasn't making consistent videos anymore. It felt wrong to have patreon members supporting me if I didn't have great content coming out regularly. I'm going to post regularly from now on though, so I'm thinking about bringing back a patreon, or maybe a buy me a coffee instead (there's more options than patreon), if I keep it up for a solid 2-3 months and people are interested!