Semester has officially started, and the hectic uni life for first years has begun. I'm on the other side now - I got a job as a teaching fellow, which means I'm teaching first year students four times a week. I really enjoyed my first week last week and can't wait to get into real content and actual teaching (last time was mostly a "get to know you" session).
In the mean time, academic life is extremely busy. Papers, research, experiments, reading, administration (Oh so much administration) have taken over my life, and I'm still working on striking a balance. Tomorrow I'm planning on getting in very early (maybe 7:45 am) to get a good start so that I may be able to leave early and have a relaxing ride home, rather than the 7 pm rush-hour bus trip, which takes forever.
I'm also going to take up running, but since I've never run casually, I'll be starting of with twice a week walks - maybe 30-45 minutes. I only need to reach about 75% of my maximum heart rate to start burning that extra tire off! Once I feel comfortable with the walking (maybe after a month or so) I'll move onto short bursts of jogging here and there and gradually work my way up. I'm looking forward to concentrating on my health and fitness this year.
Grad school & Update
I officially started grad school today. I’ve been working in the same lab/place for a couple of weeks now since January but now the real work starts. The work that will contribute towards my final degree (hopefully). Already, meetings are piling up, teaching duties are beginning this week and I have lots of ideas to generate, and experiments to start planning. Sounds stressful, right? Luckily, I devoted a lot of time this year to sort out my workflows and organisation strategies. I cleaned out my desk and lab bench surface. I added an in/out tray to my desk (which has made a LOT of difference). There are also lots of forms to be initialed, people to find and importantly, people to catch up with!
I’m trying to prioritise this year, which I think is one of the major challenges during your candidature. Finding time to spend with the important people and doing things just to relax and take a break from work. This weekend I’ve planned to go to some local markets and spend some time with my significant other.
I also started watching House of Cards. It’s my main vice, TV. I love it and would probably find it very hard to give it up, so there’s always always time for TV. It helps me unwind and think about nothing which is very much needed sometimes!
Apologies for the roughness of the writing in my blog here. I’ve written a blog before but never in a formal sense, and I am doing little to no editing due to time constraints. But, just writing for about 10-20 mins a day has been really helpful and I can foresee it removing those mental blocks I get so much during the work week.