Big Plans, I Say!
Monday begins another new semester, one which I feel will provide me with a lot of opportunities for personal growth and development. Instead of New Years Resolutions (which are now traditional in both the making and the breaking), I've decided to make semester resolutions; equally at peril, but possibly more attainable for their somewhat shorter span. Like any decent apartment contract, I can renew them on a month-to-month basis once this period is up.
My schedule of classes starts at 11am, Monday through Thursday. Monday and Wednesday nights, I'll be rushing from class to work, where I'll be until 9pm. Tuesdays and Thursdays I'll have a solid block of classes throughout the day, though I may be dropping one if I feel it's too much. On Tuesdays, I'll have class til 6pm, and on Thursdays it'll be til 3pm. Fridays and Saturdays, I work 9:30am to 5:30pm. Sundays I'll have off from both.
My plan is to use the extra time in the morning to get an hour workout in each morning. Nothing fancy; basically cardio with intermittent weight training. If I leave my house at 9am, I'll still be leaving an hour later than I was every morning last semester, and will comfortably have time to get to the campus gym before class. The gym machines are set up so that I should be able to do some reading before class each day, and the commute lasts at least 45 minutes each way, so even if I round down to 30 minutes, that's another hour of reading time. I can read an awful lot in two hours.
Homework: anything I need to do on campus can be Tuesday and Thursday nights, or Sundays during the day - it's not hard to get to school on Sunday, and the library is actually open later on Sunday nights than on Friday or Saturday. Since Thursday is also a relatively early day for me to get out, I can also take that evening as time to hang out with campus friends. A social life, however minimal, will be nice. In the meantime, I have Friday and Saturday evenings to do excess homework and/or get away from my work. If I give myself a solid four hours each on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday to do homework (which can be shifted as needed between the four days), I'll be pretty much golden, and still have time to occasionally go do something else.
Now, here's the tricky part: I am also hoping to give myself a chance to write, one hour a night. I haven't been writing like I should, and have accomplished just about nothing over my vacation; the less I do, the less I am inclined to do. I guess busy people really are the only ones with time. I'm not going to write a novel in a month, or anything like that, and I'm not even really going in with a plan. Just write whatever comes to my head (however stupid it may seem at the time) and run with it. The object here isn't to finish any major projects, or even start any major projects; I want to just habituate myself into writing regularly.
I know this sounds like an awful lot: my schedule is pretty much a solid block from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, with half of the seventh taken up in overflow. I'm not going to get much personal time, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll have more this time than I did last time, if for no other reason than I have a solid idea where I can maneuver room for myself. I am living on a tight budget; $400 a month for all personal expenses, including food, rent for my storage space, and the commute. I won't be able to spend money on pretty much anything else, so it's not such a bad thing to be blocked in like this. Hopefully it will limit the opportunities for me to spend money in the first place.
Oh, that's the rest: Spend no more than six dollars a day on myself, and cook dinner for the household at least once or twice each weekend (they cook for me pretty regularly, and I should be contributing more to that labor pool). If that amount of spending seems too high or too low, keep in mind that I have no opportunities to get home during the course of the day, and even if I carry a lunch, I am going to need some sort of cold beverage during the course of the day. However, I will try carrying lunch, and bring tea with me in the mornings.
Topher and I will be in the worst way here, as he's starting a much more stressful and time-consuming job beginning in February. I'll be away from home all week, except for bedtime, and who knows how we'll fare on the weekends. On the plus side, he's got a new job, and in the long run we'll be far better off once I've finished my degree. I focus on this fact, on what it will mean for us in the future, to keep myself from giving up. At this point, it'd be far more expensive to quit than to finish, and the benefits of finishing far outweigh the needs of the moment. We are in tumult, yes, but it's purposeful tumult.
In any case, that's my hopes and plans for the semester. I'm sure some will fall by the wayside once things kick in, but having a plan means having some knowledge of what can stay and what can go.
My schedule of classes starts at 11am, Monday through Thursday. Monday and Wednesday nights, I'll be rushing from class to work, where I'll be until 9pm. Tuesdays and Thursdays I'll have a solid block of classes throughout the day, though I may be dropping one if I feel it's too much. On Tuesdays, I'll have class til 6pm, and on Thursdays it'll be til 3pm. Fridays and Saturdays, I work 9:30am to 5:30pm. Sundays I'll have off from both.
My plan is to use the extra time in the morning to get an hour workout in each morning. Nothing fancy; basically cardio with intermittent weight training. If I leave my house at 9am, I'll still be leaving an hour later than I was every morning last semester, and will comfortably have time to get to the campus gym before class. The gym machines are set up so that I should be able to do some reading before class each day, and the commute lasts at least 45 minutes each way, so even if I round down to 30 minutes, that's another hour of reading time. I can read an awful lot in two hours.
Homework: anything I need to do on campus can be Tuesday and Thursday nights, or Sundays during the day - it's not hard to get to school on Sunday, and the library is actually open later on Sunday nights than on Friday or Saturday. Since Thursday is also a relatively early day for me to get out, I can also take that evening as time to hang out with campus friends. A social life, however minimal, will be nice. In the meantime, I have Friday and Saturday evenings to do excess homework and/or get away from my work. If I give myself a solid four hours each on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday to do homework (which can be shifted as needed between the four days), I'll be pretty much golden, and still have time to occasionally go do something else.
Now, here's the tricky part: I am also hoping to give myself a chance to write, one hour a night. I haven't been writing like I should, and have accomplished just about nothing over my vacation; the less I do, the less I am inclined to do. I guess busy people really are the only ones with time. I'm not going to write a novel in a month, or anything like that, and I'm not even really going in with a plan. Just write whatever comes to my head (however stupid it may seem at the time) and run with it. The object here isn't to finish any major projects, or even start any major projects; I want to just habituate myself into writing regularly.
I know this sounds like an awful lot: my schedule is pretty much a solid block from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, with half of the seventh taken up in overflow. I'm not going to get much personal time, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll have more this time than I did last time, if for no other reason than I have a solid idea where I can maneuver room for myself. I am living on a tight budget; $400 a month for all personal expenses, including food, rent for my storage space, and the commute. I won't be able to spend money on pretty much anything else, so it's not such a bad thing to be blocked in like this. Hopefully it will limit the opportunities for me to spend money in the first place.
Oh, that's the rest: Spend no more than six dollars a day on myself, and cook dinner for the household at least once or twice each weekend (they cook for me pretty regularly, and I should be contributing more to that labor pool). If that amount of spending seems too high or too low, keep in mind that I have no opportunities to get home during the course of the day, and even if I carry a lunch, I am going to need some sort of cold beverage during the course of the day. However, I will try carrying lunch, and bring tea with me in the mornings.
Topher and I will be in the worst way here, as he's starting a much more stressful and time-consuming job beginning in February. I'll be away from home all week, except for bedtime, and who knows how we'll fare on the weekends. On the plus side, he's got a new job, and in the long run we'll be far better off once I've finished my degree. I focus on this fact, on what it will mean for us in the future, to keep myself from giving up. At this point, it'd be far more expensive to quit than to finish, and the benefits of finishing far outweigh the needs of the moment. We are in tumult, yes, but it's purposeful tumult.
In any case, that's my hopes and plans for the semester. I'm sure some will fall by the wayside once things kick in, but having a plan means having some knowledge of what can stay and what can go.