All the recent intended and unintended high school reunions have made me wonder: what exactly am I doing these days? The easy answer, which I’ve given to most everyone, is that I’m a grad student at Stanford, getting my Master’s, etc.
However, while I’m describing my classes from last quarter and my final papers and my looming thesis, I get this sinking feeling inside. I haven’t totalled up the hours, but I doubt that my schoolwork (including classes, meetings, and reading time) fills more than a third of my time.
Not that I’m complaining. It’s amazing to have the time to do… everything else that I’m doing. Which is (in roughly the order of daily accomplishment):
1. An online crossword
2. Email
3. Run in the foothills and/or work out (by myself or with a trainer) at the amazing Equinox gym just down the street
4. Eat
5. Read the New York Times education pieces (as well as the more intriguingly-titled most popular pieces in that little box on the right side of the screen)
6. Write (my column for the Daily, as well as other pieces to blindly submit to random publications most people - including me about two months ago - have ever heard of)
7. Tutor high school students in English/Writing
8. Edit papers - primarily for Stanford PhD students (I now know more about RFID technology than most engineers)
9. Drink tea (flava of the month: jade oolong)
10. Run errands
11. Job search for June (this should probably be higher on the list)
12. Worry about job searching for June (this should definitely be higher on the list)
13. Facebook (I can’t believe I’m even putting this on the list)
14. Pay bills
15. Eat dinner
16. Clean my apartment (for those of you who know me well, I think this goes without saying)
17. Yoga (only on Sundays at the moment because, um, as much as I love downward dog, I’m kind of pressed for time)
18. Read (for pleasure, of course)
Now, obviously I don’t spend an hour doing each one of the items above (with the exception of the night I couldn’t sleep a few weeks ago, I can’t remember the last time I read for an hour straight) and it’s been a few years since I did differential calculus, but I think it’s safe to say that the numbers are a bit… staggering. I am beginning to wonder how I find time to sleep eight and a half to nine hours a night (which, by the way, is not a luxury. It is a necessity that probably should have been #1 on the list above).