Back To School 2025

I’ve been having a hard time setting aside writing time this month. Trying to fix that today.

Yes, this is a back-to-school post, but it’s related. I’m a graduate student now and have been since the first of May. Summer term is for research, though, and while I feel like I made substantial progress, and never feel like it’s enough (and that’s just part of the whole impostor syndrome thing), when September hits, a completely new routine has to be established and it’s a very different routine than I’ve had before.

This year, I have to work out a class schedule, Teaching Assistant schedule, and research schedule. No longer being an undergraduate, the expectation is that your week comes closer to approximating full-time job hours rather than whatever portion of your waking time is necessary to keep a decent GPA.

I volunteered for extra TA hours, which comes with commensurate pay (yes, TAs are paid for their labour, and reasonably well on an hourly basis, but with an expectation of heavy work in those hours and keeping everything within the budget), which puts a little stress on things.

We’ll add to that a leg injury that seriously interfered with my martial arts training for the first two weeks of the month and that I still don’t know how I got, and a head cold I picked up during the second week of classes that had me in bed early for five nights in a row. Didn’t fall behind on any academics but I absolutely lost out on writing time for those few days.

I think I have a grip on the schedule now, so things should get better.

And it needs to be said of the TA portion of the schedule: I love it so far. the original plan when I went back to school was a bachelor’s degree followed by an education degree. I’ve tried to keep the education degree door open but it seems to have decreased in likelihood as a potential choice every year. I may yet change my mind on that on the strength of how much I’m enjoying the TA gig, but it’s early days yet.

In the meantime, keeping my head above water as a full-fledged graduate student involves me getting back to the research this morning, but I feel like I can take a little time for writing here and there now even as I ease back to a 50-ish hour work week (in 4^th year, and at least half of 3^rd, it was 70+ most of the time). Plus, some family time and maybe, dare I dream, a bit of leisure time.

One can hope.

Be well, everyone.