Schedule Redux

School is back in (well, it has been for a while, but holidays and hurricane watching lead to a bit of disruption of normal scheduling) and I am finally starting to adapt to my new routine. This year (fall in particular) is going to be busy busy busy. I am adapting from my summer routine: Going to the lab early, working at the bench without time constraints, and going home in the evening, but before it gets too late or dark. Plenty of time to think, excercise and socialize occasionally, while still getting tons of work done. Enter the school year, and for the first time in, well, really quite a while, I have to restructure and engage in a lot more planning.

This fall I am teaching. Both as an aide in the Undergraduate Comparative Physiology course, where I help students, hold office hours, and will give a lecture or two. This is two days a week, and requires a trip to the main campus. My campus is around 10 miles away, and happily I can commute to the main campus by train, but the commuting does eat up part of my day. I have been working on a schedule where I work on the main campus, writing, in the morning, then spend the afternoon back in my lab on my campus. I am also training an undergraduate in the lab on my campus. This adds another teaching component, but I really enjoy it and I am really happy to give the same sort of opportunity to an undergrad here that I had. I hope she is having fun too.

So what am I trying to say. Well really that today, finally three weeks in to the school year, I think I finally have a handle on my new schedule. I was getting a little stressed, I have to admit. Worrying about timing, and how I'd fit in experiments and data analysis, but it finally clicked into place over the weekend, and I am confident that I will be able to accomplish what I need to do to finish my thesis, with teaching, writing, but still having time to engage in my hobbies.

I like it when things finally come together.