Tee-Jay Afunezie

Reader || Debater || Feminist || PhD student || Chemical Engineer - Wastewater treatment || Messi || Chelsea FC || Chess Addict || Catholic

[No filter Skin @NoFilterSkin]

You cannot:

​Work full time, raise children, keep a spotless home, show up fully in your marriage, maintain friendships, stay fit, build wealth, read books, pursue hobbies, serve only home cooked meals, answer every email, and still make the 3:30 school pickup.

​That standard was created to keep you exhausted and blaming yourself. Let it go.

[Blossom Ozurumba-Ehiarinmwian @blossomozurumba]

PhDing is so beautiful. I am now on a mission to convince all my colleagues to start theirs. I simply cannot suffer alone.

[PhD_Genie @PhD_Genie]

Every single day

[The Struggling Scientists @TheStrugglingS4]

"WHAAAT????"
- every PhD student at some point

[Re-energising Your Career @career_re]

#AcademicTwitter😂#phdvoice #PhDlife

[Hadas Weiss @weiss_hadas]

me and the peer reviewer i suggested

[Jeb Ralston @Jeb_R]

The hardest part of the PhD is not the dissertation writing and research (that's the fun part) -- it's the bureacracy, instability, and fight for funding.

[alli @sonofalli]

just remember, it could be worse. you could be in grad school right now

[Gracious Onuoha @grayshurz]

My sister, if you can afford it, delegate the house chores.
Get a nanny. Hire a good cook. Pay someone to clean.
Let a gate man open your gate.
Ease your load so you can focus on what truly matters.
You weren't created just to suffer and sweep.

[r❦ @rachreeads]

i fear this is going to be one of my favourite books

[oluchukwu⟡ @funmilayolajide]

Nigerian churches need to stop idolizing marriage and EVEN START discouraging desperation on the part of these women. There’s nothing cute about meeting someone and getting married in 3 days or one month. My goodness!

[Boi Gaesi @segello_]

I woke up with a very sore back. It’s not easy carrying around 3 degrees😭

[Madelaine Hanson @MadelaineLucyH]

To the girl who won’t wear that beautiful dress because she’s not thin enough:

Wear the dress.
People look at the dress, not your arms, not your calves, not your weird anxiety no one has ever noticed.

We are butterflies for but a moment.
We will all be corpses soon! ❤️

[positivity moon @arrtnem]

On paper it is gorgeous. Two toothbrushes in one cup. Tiny socks on the radiator. Someone whose face you know in the dark reaching for you at 3:12 and not leaving. A small person with your eyes and their laugh eating cereal too slowly before school. It sounds like the closest thing to safety we have ever invented.

But a lot of people did not grow up watching love look like that. They grew up watching marriage be a war that never declared itself out loud. 19:40 on a Tuesday, plates not quite slammed, voices just quiet enough for the neighbors not to hear. A father sleeping on the couch for three years. A mother doing the emotional admin for five people and getting a wilted bouquet once a year as a receipt. The child learns quickly that forever can be a threat as easily as it is a promise.

You say mini mes. A lot of people hear smaller witnesses. Witnesses to debt. To screaming in the car park. To one parent disappearing for six months and calling it adjusting. Some bodies carry the memory of being the kid who held the camera and took the Christmas photo where nobody spoke to each other for two days after. They do not crave that house. They crave never putting anyone through it.

There is another layer no one likes talking about because it sounds too practical for a sacred topic. Mortgage rates that bite. Groceries that feel like a test. Friends burning out in two jobs and still wondering if they can afford a dentist, не те що дитину. Bodies that already wake tired. The idea of bringing in a small, breakable person is not just cute to them. It is a spreadsheet with red numbers and a nervous system that shakes.

And then there are the ones who were never told they were allowed to want something for themselves first. To them, choosing no partner and no kids for now is not selfishness. It is the first act of self parenting. It is finally learning to feed the part of them that was always the one doing the caretaking. They are not missing the desire. Sometimes they are surgically removing the compulsion put in them by a culture that treated women as wombs and men as wallets.

Some people hear spouse and feel warmth. Others hear spouse and feel a hand closing over their life. Some people look at a child and feel their chest widen. Others look at their own sleep schedule, their own untreated trauma, their own rage in traffic and think not yet, not like this. That is not nihilism. That is responsibility. The bravest thing some people will ever do is break the chain by not adding another link.

Marriage and children can be the most beautiful thing. They can also be the most efficient way to hide from yourself. It is easy to call it forever if you have never sat with your own loneliness without a witness. It is easy to say mini me if you have not yet met the parts of you that should not be replicated without serious editing. Many people want to arrive to that altar and that nursery with less unprocessed violence in their hands. That takes time. That looks from the outside like drifting.

If you are lucky enough to want it and still be soft when you picture it, hold that gently. Do not turn your hunger into a ruler you hit others with. The world has given plenty of reasons to be afraid of binding contracts and tiny hearts. Climate, war, courts, childhood bedrooms where love was conditional on performance. Not everyone has healed enough to gamble a child on their hope.

Ask people what they want under all the noise. Some will say a partner and kids. Some will say a room, a dog, three good friends and work that feels honest. Some will say I do not know yet, I was never given space to ask. The distance is not as far as it looks. Everyone is hunting the same thing under different packaging. A place where their nervous system can stop scanning the door. A hand that stays. A tomorrow that is not a threat.

You can stand in your dream of spouse and children without needing the whole planet to agree.

[The Struggling Scientists @TheStrugglingS4]

Everyone talks about collaboration in academia meanwhile👇

[The PhD Place @ThePhDPlace]

Good morning, sleepyhead. You asked me to remind you that your thesis won’t write itself, no matter how long you hide under the duvet.

[Nicki 🫧🪷 @nickimoraa]

Please teach your daughters that there is more to life than male attention.

[Ms. Mamas 🥵 @_Byarugaba_]

Hey my sister developed a brain aneurysm during child birth and it killed her, so where do we go from here ???
Your personal experience does not negate other women’s lived experiences. Good for you, I guess but stfu

[Shana @yepdatstwin]

Right now someone you helped is telling ppl you're a bad person.

[Time Capsule Tales @timecaptales]

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview in March 2025 with the understanding it would only be released after her death. This is her final message from it.