My Autumn Syllabus (and how to study when you have a 9-5)

On what I want to self-study in Autumn and how I schedule this in when I have a full time job...

As promised, I'm sharing my self-curated autumn syllabus. These are areas within literature and philosophy that fascinate me, and I don't intend this to be a guide for 'everyone' (my compliance 9-5 self hates that word), but rather inspiration and, as promised, a practical guide on how to integrate self-studying around full-time work.

We can all make ambitious reading lists, but how do we actually crack on and tackle the daunting pile?

I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'd say I'm something of an expert in planning at this point. Well, planning how to study around working, anyway.

I started working when I was fifteen, so balancing work and study is something I've got ten years of experience with now. During my undergrad I was working most days and studying in the evenings, and during my postgrad I juggled two jobs. It's something that takes time to perfect, and you have to know your limits. And while it may not be healthy, I thrive under a very busy schedule!

How to study with a full time job?

I've always time-blocked. You could scroll through my Google calendar back to 2016 and it would look remarkably similar to what it does today. No colour, just different shades of grey!

I plan my week each week, taking into consideration any other commitments I have, then figure out what I can realistically schedule in study-wise. When the day arrives, I write it all down in my little to-do list book.

Let me walk you through my typical planning process.

This is what I anticipate my upcoming Wednesday will look like:

First, I schedule in my main events or tasks for the day. I know that from 8:30 to 4:30 I'll be at work, so that goes straight in the calendar. Nothing can really be done during those hours.

In the morning I like to go to the gym, so I block that out as well, typically from 5:30 to 7:00. Usually in the morning I'm also able to write some notes from the books I read the previous day, plus my article log, so that sits in the calendar there. This is just a marker and might get done later in the day!

From 5pm onwards is where the magic happens.

I first determine what sort of day it is. Here's typically how I structure my week:

Monday: Substack writing day

Tuesday: Substack writing day / self-study day

Wednesday: Self-study day

Thursday: Tagalog or coding learning

Friday: A bit of everything day (whatever I need to catch up on)

I rarely write on weekends because that's time to spend with my partner or family. If he's working, I might do some writing or self-studying!

I usually work until around 7ish, when my partner gets home and we have dinner. Then I wind down and read. So I have a very small window for actually doing focused work. About two hours a day, eight per week. I really need to make sure I'm focused during those hours.

As you can see, I time-block everything out and then add a Google task on top. I normally just schedule the main task. So the example above is reading two articles. From there I may write short journal entries or collate a bunch of quotes. The nitty gritty to-do list can grow on the day.

I know from experience that it takes me around an hour to read a twenty-page academic article and about an hour to write a 1,000-word Substack newsletter. If I need to research before an article, that might take another hour or two, so I factor that in the day before. I suppose it depends how quickly you read and write. I have four years of academic experience with literature and philosophy, so I can get through these things quite efficiently. Do a few test runs yourself. How long does it take you to read a twenty-page academic article?

Once you've got everything penciled into your calendar or diary or however you like planning, you need an end goal. Why do you want to read these things? I read and self-study to contribute to my Substack newsletter, and of course because I genuinely enjoy it. But if I don't read, I can't write. Simple as that.

For reference, the resources I use for writing/studying are:

1. Google Calendar

2. Google Tasks

3. Notion

4. Notepads

5. Mini todolist notepad

So that's how I plan my writing and studying around my 9-5.

Now onto what you actually want to read:

My Autumn Syllabus

I've had a long list in my Notion for ages about what I want to study, but maybe you're not sure where to start, or your interests feel too broad. That's completely fine. It's okay to start broad. Read a few articles and hunt for those keywords, as I mentioned in my how to research niche interests in literature and philosophy post. Maybe you don't know what you want to research yet. Then start wide. My article logs could be a good jumping-off point. Read through a few of these pieces and see if any spark your interest. I read one the other day and plucked a novel from it to add to my TBR.

As I mentioned in my research article, it's all about finding those trigger words. Read widely, then you can create your syllabus around what catches your attention. Click all those links, follow the breadcrumbs, and eventually you'll have yourself a nice little bibliography.

Now knowing what time I have, as outlined above, I know how much I can actually assign (sadly not everything)! I also don’t have all that much time this autumn! I have a few trips, getting married, going on a honeymoon and then I need to sit two exams for work (between November to April) which will equate to 120 hours of studying so perhaps all this will fail! But we will cross that bridge when I get there.

But this what I hope to follow.

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September

Clarice Lispector’s Philosophy

I’ve only read one Lispector novel but I want to study her work before I read others to gain more from it — and I want to focus on her philosophy for now.

I plan to read two articles a week in this topic, and here is what I have selected:

Clarice Lispector’s Philosophy of Time¹

A Retro Ethics of Errors²

Clarice Lispector: From Brazil to the World: Chapter 5, Clarice and God³

Could it be that what I’m writing to you is Behind Thought?⁴

In the Shadows of the Cosmos: on the margins of Clarice lispector’s creative worlds⁵

Philosophy with Clarice Lispector ⁶

When I read these I will make note of bibliography references or scholars that interest me to some day come back to. It’s about creating that web for deeper study.

Just for reference this is how I lay out my Notion to help me make these notes.

Self-Study Notion Pages

I recommend when you build your syllabus, saving links or already downloading resources as this will save you time. I will also generally take handwritten notes as this helps me connect dots and formulate my own thoughts. Reminder: it’s good to learn what the critics say, but what unique conversation can you bring to the table?

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September and October

Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason

I read Kant and found him rather impossible. I probably still will. But I want to read it again and create a series on substack called ‘I can’t do Kant’ so hence this choice! This will probably begin in October through to the new year.

I will mainly read the core text, go over my previous notes and read one or two companions. When I delve into the writing I can provide further resources if you are interested.

For reference this is A and B edition for The Critique of Pure Reason. One is the first edition and the second is revised. Here is a link to an online version.

Core text

1– A-edition Preface (pp. 99–105 | Avii–Axxii), A-edition Introduction (pp. 127–135 | A1–A16 / B30)

2– Transcendental Aesthetic (pp. 172–192 | A19 / B33–B73)

3– Transcendental Logic (pp. 193–218 | A50 / B74–B116)

4– A-Deduction (pp. 219–244 | A84 / B116–A130)

5– First and Second Analogies (pp. 295–316 | A176 / B218–A212 / B256), Refutation of Idealism (pp. 326–337 | B274–B294)

6– Phenomena and Noumena (pp. 338–353 | A235 / B294–A260 / B315), Ideas of Pure Reason (pp. 384–408 | A293 / B249–A338 / B396)

7– Paralogisms (pp. 409–444 | A338 / B396–A405)

8– Antinomies (pp. 459–469 | A405 / B432–A425 / B453), Freedom or Nature (pp. 484–489 | A446 / B472–A451 / B479), Transcendental Idealism (pp. 532–546 | A532 / B560–A558 / B586)

9– Transcendental Ideal and Rational Theology (pp. 551–589 | A567 / B595–A642 / B670), Final Aim of Human Reason (pp. 605–623 | A669 / B697–A704 / B732)

Parallel Companion Reading

J. Buroker, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2006

1– Buroker, ch. 2; Prolegomena, Preface (pp. 5–14 | AA 4:255–264)

2– Buroker, ch. 3; Prolegomena, §§10–13 (pp. 34–38 | AA 4:283–286)

3– Buroker, ch. 4; Prolegomena, §§1–3 (pp. 15–23 | AA 4:265–270)

4– Buroker, ch. 5 (pp. 103–115); Prolegomena, §§14–20 (pp. 46–54 | AA 4:294–302)

5– Buroker, ch. 8 (pp. 201–207)

6– Buroker, ch. 8 (pp. 213–225)

7– Buroker, ch. 9

8– Buroker, chs. 10–11 (pp. 284–290)

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October

Interpretations of Hell

I've just finished Katabasis and I'm completely hooked on the question of hell. Not the fire and brimstone kind, but hell as literary device, psychological landscape, political metaphor. How do we depict the undepictable? How have cultures imagined descent, punishment, and the possibility of return? Kuang's novel has cracked something open for me, this urgent need to understand how we've been mapping the underworld and what those maps reveal about the worlds above ground.

Here are five concepts I want to disappear into, five rabbit holes that will hopefully lead me deeper underground. I've got some starting texts, but honestly, I want this to be messily exploratory. I want to follow footnotes down strange paths until I'm somewhere I never expected to be.

Eight/Ten Courts of Hell

Having Once Died and Returned to Life: Representations of Hell in Medieval China⁷

“Representation of Buddhist Monks in the Underworld from Early Medieval China,” Religions 16 (2025): 775.⁸

Dante’s Inferno

The Divine Comedy (Hell) through Aristotelian ethics and Thomistic ontology⁹

Dunhaung Cave’s Text

The Scripture on the Ten Kings (Stephen F. Teiser)¹⁰

Hectate and Greco-Roman Underworld

“Necromancy in the Clerical Underworld” in Magic in the Middle Ages ¹¹

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November

Mother-Daughter Relationships

There are two current interest I have here. I have explored this idea a lot as it was my thesis but these are two interpretations playing on my mind. This will be a rabbit hole research session as it’s hard to find particular articles. It will be a lot of clicking about for sure.

The generative cycle of daughter and mother

Bracha L. Ettinger – Matrixial Theory

Daughter’s obsession with analysing and critiquing the mother

Gravity and Grace, Simone Wells

A reader recommended this text and it caught my attention immediately. There's something about stumbling across a book through someone else's enthusiasm that feels like finding a secret door you didn't know existed. I'm planning to read it with my usual highlighter-heavy approach, then let whatever I've underlined dictate where I go next. Basically, one extended quotation study that follows its own logic rather than mine.

I've got a few other concepts floating around that I'm curious about right now. Leavis and Snow's famous two cultures debate, Woolf and the whole Bloomsbury circle, Kierkegaard's particular brand of existential anxiety. If any of these surface naturally while I'm following the main thread, brilliant. If not, they'll keep. This needs to be a flexible process, one that bends toward whatever feels most urgent in the moment.

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The Wider Picture

As I mentioned, I've got a few other things I want to weave into this autumn mix, though I'm keeping them loosely scheduled rather than rigidly planned.

I'm currently learning Tagalog because my partner is Filipino, so I try to dedicate thirty minutes to an hour for that a few days a week. I should probably be doing more, but I really struggle with language learning, particularly with a language that has relatively few resources compared to the usual suspects. It's slow going, but it feels important.

From November onwards, I'll need to buckle down and study for my final two insurance exams. These require a combined minimum of 120 hours of study, and I want to sit and pass them by April so I've got a shot at promotion. Not the most thrilling material, but necessary.

Then there's coding, which I used to do quite regularly before I discovered Substack and essentially swapped one for the other. But I really miss it. There's something about coding that takes my mind to a completely different place, plus it's an undeniably valuable skill. I'm thinking of focusing on Python, though I need to do more research into what direction makes the most sense.

You'll see all this research filtering through my newsletters over the coming months, so make sure to subscribe if any of these topics catch your interest.

And as a side note, I'm incredibly lucky to have alumni access to my university library, which makes finding resources so much easier. But there are ways to track down academic articles if you know where to look. JSTOR is a good one and putting pdf in Google after the title of the resource you want can work wonders.

If you're struggling to find an article you really want to read, reach out and I'll see if I can get access through my library. I keep thinking I need to find a way to create some kind of community where we could share resources like this. Maybe I'll turn my subscriber chat into exactly that. But let me ponder on how best to do this for a little while longer.

And finally, please consider tipping me because this newsletter took absolutely ages to put together!

1. Marchesini, P. (2023) ‘Clarice Lispector’s Philosophy of Time’, Angelaki, 28(2), pp. 125–135.

2. Yurgel, C. (2021). Clarice Lispector: A Retro Ethics of Errors. philoSOPHIA 11(1), 74-89.

3. itz, E.E. (2024). Clarice Lispector: From Brazil to the World. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. — specifically the chapter ‘Clarice and God’

4. Nancy, J.-L. and Negrete, F. (2023) ‘Could it be that what I’m writing to you is Behind Thought? (dialogue with água viva by clarice lispector)1’, Angelaki, 28(2), pp. 136–140.

5. Correia, T. (2023). In the Shadows of the Cosmos: on the margins of clarice lispector’s creative worlds. Angelaki, 28(2), 68–78.

6. Negrete, F. (2023) ‘Philosophy with Clarice Lispector’, Angelaki, 28(2), pp. 3–5.

7. Stephen F. Teiser, “Having Once Died and Returned to Life: Representations of Hell in Medieval China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48 (1988): 433–463.

8. “Representation of Buddhist Monks in the Underworld from Early Medieval China,” Religions 16 (2025): 775.

9. https://peasa.eu/site/article/view/35

10. https://archive.org/details/scriptureontenki0000teis/page/n5/mode/2up

11. 1. Kieckhefer R. NECROMANCY IN THE CLERICAL UNDERWORLD. In: Magic in the Middle Ages. Canto Classics. Cambridge University Press; 2014:151-175.