I've recently finished the first of several evaluation periods for my MA program, the effective equivalent we have of midterms, meaning that roughly each six to eight weeks we have a flood of papers, exams, and other forms of evaluation of that period's classes. Our classes are split up into small segments because of the fast-paced nature of the program, and so we get a 'taste' of each subject, through the collective of which it is presumed we will come to a sophisticated understanding of the principles of political science that our program deals with in particular. That and hopefully something to push us along through a thesis, alas. So I survived, despite notifications by my alma mater that it would be rescinding alumni access to its VPN soon, and I came to some conclusions about time management that I had never fully been able to realize as a personal habit before.
Productivity is obviously very important as a graduate student, the more so as an immigrant to a new country, but I have a tendency to be scattered and only infrequently manage to collect my energies in one place, which leads to mixed results in terms of initiative and moderate success in terms of academic pursuits. My distractions written about previously didn't really help in terms of this period, but I found that after a paper or two I managed to hone in on what needed to be done with greater focus, perhaps aided by nothing of mine being broken by housekeepers or dramatic goings-on in the apartment otherwise. Yet find my focus I did, and I found that with my schedule seeming to be impossible, I accepted the responsibility as just that and plugged through it. My Portuguese language course runs from 8 AM until noon, which means that I have to get up early in order to have time to eat breakfast and get there within a reasonable window of the class starting. (I'm laying no claims to punctuality in arriving to class in this country, because it doesn't happen.) When faced with midnight deadlines for papers and homework in that class, it came to be that I saw myself needing more time in the morning to regroup myself, organize my days, and get going with enough fuel to last through both the class and my other obligations without stopping.
More time in the morning. How? I am not a morning person.
Those were the thoughts I had initially, and it's true that I'm really nothing of a morning person. There are very few people I want to see, let alone interact with before 8 AM rolls around. If I don't have to wake up before 9 AM, I generally try not to. However, necessity rang, and I've come around to waking up anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 AM each day in order to reach my objective. There's a lot to be said for the amount of willpower it requires to motivate yourself to get out of your bed, face a cold, dark, and silent apartment, eat breakfast, and organize your day in just a couple of hours before walking out and getting started with things. There's a lot to be said for actually doing it, the follow-through, and I've mostly managed to do it. Like anyone, I've had hiccups, days where I didn't hear my alarm and slept until noon, others where I woke up only with enough time to eat and run out the door, but the majority of the time I wake up in the dark hours of the early morning and do as I'm slowly getting accustomed to, learning to relish the time I have to think my thoughts, be alone, and get my creative energy flowing. For someone who prefers to stay awake until those hours of the day, it's a radical change. I don't go to bed that much earlier, but I utilize my time awake more efficiently.
This is all a part of themes of late that revolve around setting realistic goals and attaining them, evaluations of what exactly it is that those goals are and what purpose they serve, and a lens toward where that will push me into the future. Perhaps it's not realistic to wake up at noon one day after going to sleep at 5 AM and say "today I will go to bed extra early, by 10 PM, and wake up and do yoga and cook a full breakfast at 6 AM!", but setting more attainable goals seems to work. Waking up at 5:30-6:30 after going to bed at midnight leaves me tired, but the benefit to the rest of the day outweighs the relative sleepiness. The extra productivity is more satisfying than the perceived comfort of not doing it, and it leads to other decisions which expand on that. I'm also eating better since I've started this particular habit and, upon balancing my accounts, found that I'm spending much less money than I thought.
So the purpose of writing this, I suppose, is to say that it can be done. I, in particular, can overcome my natural tendencies to laze about until the ugly hours of the morning and instead turn the ugly hours of the morning into useful ones. They might not be any more attractive, but with a shift in perspective and willpower, they're no longer enemies. It's all part of the process of actually doing the things that we think would make us better versions of ourselves, and in my case, I needed to start somewhere. Let's see where that goes.
Productivity is obviously very important as a graduate student, the more so as an immigrant to a new country, but I have a tendency to be scattered and only infrequently manage to collect my energies in one place, which leads to mixed results in terms of initiative and moderate success in terms of academic pursuits. My distractions written about previously didn't really help in terms of this period, but I found that after a paper or two I managed to hone in on what needed to be done with greater focus, perhaps aided by nothing of mine being broken by housekeepers or dramatic goings-on in the apartment otherwise. Yet find my focus I did, and I found that with my schedule seeming to be impossible, I accepted the responsibility as just that and plugged through it. My Portuguese language course runs from 8 AM until noon, which means that I have to get up early in order to have time to eat breakfast and get there within a reasonable window of the class starting. (I'm laying no claims to punctuality in arriving to class in this country, because it doesn't happen.) When faced with midnight deadlines for papers and homework in that class, it came to be that I saw myself needing more time in the morning to regroup myself, organize my days, and get going with enough fuel to last through both the class and my other obligations without stopping.
More time in the morning. How? I am not a morning person.
Those were the thoughts I had initially, and it's true that I'm really nothing of a morning person. There are very few people I want to see, let alone interact with before 8 AM rolls around. If I don't have to wake up before 9 AM, I generally try not to. However, necessity rang, and I've come around to waking up anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 AM each day in order to reach my objective. There's a lot to be said for the amount of willpower it requires to motivate yourself to get out of your bed, face a cold, dark, and silent apartment, eat breakfast, and organize your day in just a couple of hours before walking out and getting started with things. There's a lot to be said for actually doing it, the follow-through, and I've mostly managed to do it. Like anyone, I've had hiccups, days where I didn't hear my alarm and slept until noon, others where I woke up only with enough time to eat and run out the door, but the majority of the time I wake up in the dark hours of the early morning and do as I'm slowly getting accustomed to, learning to relish the time I have to think my thoughts, be alone, and get my creative energy flowing. For someone who prefers to stay awake until those hours of the day, it's a radical change. I don't go to bed that much earlier, but I utilize my time awake more efficiently.
This is all a part of themes of late that revolve around setting realistic goals and attaining them, evaluations of what exactly it is that those goals are and what purpose they serve, and a lens toward where that will push me into the future. Perhaps it's not realistic to wake up at noon one day after going to sleep at 5 AM and say "today I will go to bed extra early, by 10 PM, and wake up and do yoga and cook a full breakfast at 6 AM!", but setting more attainable goals seems to work. Waking up at 5:30-6:30 after going to bed at midnight leaves me tired, but the benefit to the rest of the day outweighs the relative sleepiness. The extra productivity is more satisfying than the perceived comfort of not doing it, and it leads to other decisions which expand on that. I'm also eating better since I've started this particular habit and, upon balancing my accounts, found that I'm spending much less money than I thought.
So the purpose of writing this, I suppose, is to say that it can be done. I, in particular, can overcome my natural tendencies to laze about until the ugly hours of the morning and instead turn the ugly hours of the morning into useful ones. They might not be any more attractive, but with a shift in perspective and willpower, they're no longer enemies. It's all part of the process of actually doing the things that we think would make us better versions of ourselves, and in my case, I needed to start somewhere. Let's see where that goes.
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