This has been my busiest term of school ever. I’ve got two very challenging classes, Social Psychology and Applied Data Analysis, my honors thesis, and a ten hour a week internship at Stepping Stone, a residential treatment center for adjudicated teenage boys. On top of that, I’m taking the GRE (Graduate Record Exam–a really hard test, like the SAT for getting into graduate schools) during finals week. That’s on the same day as my last final. That’s the point in my story where my classmates’ eyes bug a little. “OK, that’s crazy.”
This is too busy. I don’t like it. I like being in heavy intellectual training. I like being in this kind of shape; I can read and understand a journal article in a couple hours, for example. I enjoy being this productive, too, but I’ve gotten stressed out. About halfway through the term I started skimping on my non-intellectual stuff, to keep on top. My meditation practice is getting the squeeze–I’m rarely sitting for more than 15 minutes a day and often it’s just a token few minutes. That’s when I feel how strong my mind is going the most–when I’m sitting to meditate or lying down to sleep, this clear, powerful thinking, like a force, pushing up to the front of my head, driving my awareness and dominating my experience. I am getting enough sleep, at least. I’ve been strict with myself on that and it makes a big difference. My exercise has been getting the squeeze, though. All I do is bike, and I like biking but I also like to run, lift weights, and swim. I just can’t do them as part of my commute. I ride for transportation 30-90 minutes a day. I bike between classes. Sometimes it feels like all I do with my body is bike, sit, and sleep. Not very much walking, even. I dance, too, probably four hours a week on average. That’s gotten some squeeze, but not too much. My songwriting and music playing has gotten the squeeze. My emotional support has gotten the squeeze. I’m down to maybe one co-counseling session a week and no phone time with friends. I’m lucky to live with good friends, so I still get supportive conversations. I get almost no physical affection, though. I can’t blame that on my term–I’m just far away from my most affectionate friends and family. Danielle, Maya, Jeannie, Mom, I miss you! I miss the rest of you too. I want to be in your lives more. I want to know how you are and what you’re doing.
But not for a couple more weeks. After this post, I’m putting my head down, business only, until the term is over. I’ll start posting again in mid-December. Have a great Thanksgiving and end of fall!
Here are some photographs of my calendar I took when I first conceived of this post, a few weeks ago. They are the first six weeks of my term. I’m a little nostalgic about how much more balanced I felt in those days. (Look at all that blue, red and pink!) Here’s what you’re looking at: I kept track of what I did, as I did it. Anything that I did for at least 15 minutes at a time made it on here. (My week calendars do not look like this ahead of time–they have only firm commitments and deadlines in them, GTD-style.) The columns are days, Sunday to Saturday, from about 8 am to about 11 pm. The purple is school stuff, like classes and studying. The blue is personal stuff, like cooking, eating, cleaning, and talking with friends. Green is office work, blogging, working in the elections office, teaching dance classes or lessons. Orange is dancing. Red is meditation and co-counseling. Pink is exercise. Yellow is Suntop stuff–chores, meetings, and outings.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Nathen's Miraculous Escape 
December 1, 2008 at 11:45 pm
According to malcolm gladwell in his new book (which I’m sure you will have the chance to read in less busy times), mastery = 10,000 hours.
With all the extra hours you are racking up, this semester is like a crazy bonus round: ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!
December 2, 2008 at 1:54 am
That book is my Xmas list.
December 2, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Unless you’ve already had your mental furniture re-arranged by probability theory, the other book you should poke your nose into come christmas is The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives.
In the midst of reading it I lost my faith in narrative and wanted to stencil pascal’s triangle on my wall for handy reference.
December 8, 2008 at 5:56 am
That sounds good. Maybe I’ll add it to my list.
I was thinking about this 10,000 hour thing and how it relates to my busy term/life, and it seems like the concept favors specialists over generalists like myself. I’m putting in a lot of hours but they are not all in the same activity. All the school stuff has something to do with psychology, but you can’t really master psychology the way you can a musical instrument. statistics is something you can master, but my statistics class averaged 21 hours a week–that’ll end up at less than 250 hours in a term, so maybe 2,000 hours total if I end up taking 2 years of graduate level stats, which I may, but probably not more than that. I’m not on a path to master statistics. So really, 250 hours of my bonus round term is wasted in terms of mastery, because I’m a generalist, not a specialist. The same goes for most of the rest of the time I’ve spent this term, unless I can generalize and say that all of this work has involved learning or maybe critical thinking. Those are things that I am on the path of mastery of, if they can be mastered. Other things I’m on that path with, at least in spirit, are being kind to myself, being compassionate, dancing, and songwriting. With 10,000 hours to put in, I may be 70 before I do, though.