In the past year, a culmination of COVID-19, working remotely for 60–70 hours/week, and not knowing what I wanted to do resulted in extreme burnout. It’s no longer a series of “How to get a 4.0” but “How to get a 4.0 with Burnout.” I’m no longer hyper-focused on my grades but instead, I have balancing priorities of school, friends, and career. Each week, I’ll state how I want to prioritize.
The reason I’m starting this so late is because I’ve felt like I’ve been scrambling. For the last two semesters, I didn’t feel motivated by school and academics anymore. But now that I’m back in person and taking interesting classes and can talk to cool professors, I feel more motivated to talk about it. I wish I could control my time more. So really — this is the goal for this series. It’s about how to manage my time and catch up from a lagging, disorganized semester.
School
AHHH. So here’s the deal: I’m taking 5 classes which takes up a lot of time for me, so I need to figure out the best times before and after class where I can review and prepare for the class or study.
Alright, so upon reflecting on my schedule, it seems like Sunday will be my study and grind day where I just sit somewhere the whole day and do work. I blocked out 3 hour chunks on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday for me to reflect on my classes and prepare for my other classes in the week.
This week, I am planning to catch up on Computer Science. My academic goal is to discuss with my professor the quiz questions I was unsure about.
Recruiting
AHHH! Here’s some nonsensical words but I need to reach out to Diana to see if I can get a full-time offer guarantee and then I’ll be chilling, get some confirmation from a Capital One Eno team. And for Fulbright, I need to demonstrate why I would genuinely be a good teacher and to prove it to them, I need to infuse details and stories. I should review the material N. sent me. As a teacher, my star quality is I always play games and create different games — think of a time when we are just playing with kids and turn something into a game.
I think my true quality that would make me good at Fulbright is I genuinely love kids and love dealing with them. The issue is how to make that come across in an application.
I am a bit stressed with all the jobs I have to apply to, so I’m going to make a recruiting notebook with all the cool opportunities I see and I’ll apply during my “Career” class.
Hanging out
Ahhh- it’s fun but I need to learn to say no. If there’s more than 3 things I have to get done for that day on my to-do list, I’ll ask if my friends want to study instead of hanging out. We will see how that goes! Actually, ideally, the best thing is to say no.
Ok so my goal this week is to visit office hours of my teachers to just say hello and ask a stupid question. That will be the best way to start establishing an academic relationship and essentially do a reset.
Everyday this week, I’m going to mark out 30 mins for self care. I’ll reflect in my Journey what that self-care is.
