Work-Life Balance?

February 10, 2020

Work-Life Balance?

It was not my intent for this to turn into a Monday blog, and I still am trying to keep these posts coming out on Sundays, but the craziness of these past few weeks has unfortunately pushed sitting down to write these to the bottom of my to-do list. I'm hoping we'll be back to normal soon, at the latest by the first week back from break in a few Sundays, but for now, thanks for bearing with me!

This week was an absolute whirlwind. Every year, time goes by a little faster, and that makes sense. One week is a smaller fraction of your life every week that you live. But this year, time really decided to speed up, and the rate at which a week goes by is enough to give a girl whiplash. Sometimes it's nice to know that, no matter what you have to deal with in a given week, it will all be over in the blink of an eye, but sometimes it's frustrating to watch time pass so quickly when you want a moment to last forever.

This past week fell more in the former category, as my to-do list reached from the floor to the sky. Being sick kept me from getting much done last weekend, so my normal workload was compounded with that extra work. Still recovering from the strep and allergic reaction, I was sort of forced to just push through it and work basically nonstop from Monday morning to last night. Before this stretch of work started, it seemed daunting, but physicists would love me, because I apparently have quite a bit of inertia. Some might call it being a workaholic, but once I started working, I found it hard to stop and take a break. On Thursday I was planning out all the things I had to do that weekend, and with a total of 25.5 hours of school work, that left me with 4.5 hours to eat over the course of the weekend, calculating in time for rowing and sleep and such. If I hadn't been in work mode that definitely would have stressed me out, but I saw it more as a challenge to see how much I could get done in a weekend. The answer, apparently, is a lot. But now that I have finished all that work, I still am in the mood to get stuff done and am having a hard time sitting down for a second and relaxing while I have the chance. This might not be totally bad, I mean not a lot of college students have the issue of feeling "too productive," but I'm not completely convinced it's healthy for me to be looking for work to do, even if there's nothing pressing at the moment.

Most of the work I've been doing has been working on projects and assignments for my design classes, as well as studying for the two midterms I have this week. It's been interesting having fewer exams but more assignments worth 8-10% of my grade spread out through the term, because I definitely feel as though the workload has been more evenly distributed, but greater on average than last term. I also have one more class this term, which adds to it.

Despite sitting at my desk for the large majority of this weekend, I did take some time to force myself to leave my room and appreciate the fact that for the first time in several weeks, we've had some sunny days. Friday night, Amy and I went to a UBC basketball double-header, and watched both the boys' and girls' teams win. It was one of the bigger home games that they do a lot of advertising for, so there was a good crowd and fun halftime shows and such. Saturday morning I went and rowed for the first time since being back, and it was nice to be out on a beautiful morning. Practices have been cancelled most weeks due to the weather, so I appreciated the somewhat blue sky and no wind. Saturday night I also went down to the beach with Carol and Amy to watch the sunset, which was beautiful. I haven't had much time to walk around the beaches like I did last term, so it was nice to be down there again.

I have to get to class now to start my week, but I'll be back next week at the start of my spring break!