6.30am Up to go pick up Takoyaki trailer and tow it to trading position
7am Breakfast, deal with 16 emails that came in overnight
8am Jog down to hire car place, arrange car rental for Christmas
9am – 11am Read book about Japanese NGOs and write dissertation outline
11am – 12.30pm meet with librarian to discuss dissertation
12.30 – 2pm Have all that fuss with the WIFI / staff
2pm – 2.30pm meeting with member of CILASS staff to discuss a joint presentation we’re giving on ‘technology in the classroom’ next week to library staff.
2.30pm – 3.30pm take a breather, blog
3.30pm – 4.30pm Sheffield Graduate Award meeting
4.30 – 5.30pm dash home to pick up posters for winners of Japan soc competition, eat
5.30pm – 6pm take trailer back to parking place
6pm – 6.45pm Stop off at tandem learning to drop off posters and catch up with a couple of people
7pm – 10pm training for part time job
10pm ~ now: emails re. CILASS projects, TGW advertising, complaint to computer services about staff attitude!
It does worry me that I am so busy that I am not spending any time on my Japanese studies. I think I will say bye bye to that First right now!
These past 7 days I have written an average of 34 emails a day, most of which are related to some kind of business. Exhausting stuff.
How can I let go?
I thought you had resolved to put your degree first Joseph…?
I am fully aware that I sound like some nagging mother here but I was pretty disappointed to read this post. Aside from the car rental and dissertation stuff I can’t see any of the other stuff being “more important” than your studies, in the greater scheme of things. I’m sure most of it is a lot more enjoyable/sociable/fulfilling but, then again, that’s what getting a good degree is all about I’m afraid – making sacrifices. Perhaps you are just doing what every student does for pretty much 80% of their degree – procrastinating…except, of course, you wouldn’t do it by spending time doing such “unproductive” things as watching TV etc but rather filling your days with not-that-important-really-but-makes-you -feel-like-you’ve-done-something-worthwhile-to-ease-the guilt-of-not-doing-work-you-came-to-Uni-to do activities. If you catch my drift…
I think it depends on whether you are getting “enough” study in with your other activities going on. Few people spend all their free hours studying even when they are concentrating on a degree.If it isn’t enough, then you need to start pruning some activities whether they are “good” for you or not on another level.
I think part of the problem is that you’re an adult, not a teen just out of high school and your interests are more diversified and your character more developed. You know who you are and have an awareness of your need to develop yourself along various lines. It’s much easier to focus on school when you don’t know who you are and define yourself relatively narrowly as a student of a particular subject. You’re more than that and it’s a good thing for you as a person but it does make it harder to be focused only on study.
(P.S. Some of my comments in the past were never posted so I haven’t been commenting as much as I may have, but I am still reading.)
Thank you Shari, and apologies for your previous comments not being published. I rarely reject anything.
I have noticed that sometimes I don’t get a notification mail from Blogger, although the comments are there waiting for me to moderate when I log in to the next time.
If some are going walkabouts then I really don’t know where. I haven’t made any changes to my template or settings that would affect that.
Anyway, thanks for your comments today. They help. I think you are right in that a little pruning may be required (no matter how hard saying ‘No’ is).
I can see one project that I’m involved in where I have been trying to help put a new management system in place. This should start to pay off in the next couple of weeks, enabling me to feel able to let go of that.
I guess I’ll only really know whether I’ve got the balance right when 1st semester results are released next spring.