No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn

Long time, no post. I've been submerged in the madness of my schedule. I ended up with 3 classes - should be able to handle it, right? With classes held 3 days a week, there should be plenty of time to read in advance of lecture and finish the problem sets, work on the resume and research companies, as well as get involved in a few student groups. So naive I was. Classtime is only a small piece of the time commitment. Let me break it down for you...

[Start Calculation]
[Start RANT]

- Class ~ 9 hrs/wk: 3 hours of lecture per class, 3 classes
- Class Prep ~ 20 hrs/wk: Doing reading and homework sets or case preparation is variable, but anywhere from 5-10 hours per class. So let's say about 20 hours total for now (just wait until midterms start...).
- Study Groups ~ 6 hrs/wk: Along with each class comes a weekly study group session, usually about 2 hours
- Office Hours ~ 2 hrs/wk: Unlike the geniuses that surround me, I occasionally need to hit office hours or review sessions to go over concepts that don't make sense the first time around.
- Career Prep ~ 5 hrs/wk: Various career services sessions - lectures and presentations, resume review workshops (and companies haven't even started their presentations yet...).
- LEAD ~ 4 hrs/wk: Session time and preparation
- Student Groups ~ 15 hrs/wk: Most events haven't really kicked in yet, but I've signed up for quite a few. The one that will likely take up most of my time is BSG.
- Non-Academics ~10 hrs/wk: Social hours or dinner events, TNDC, LPF - the acronyms are irrelevant, they all translate to 'drink and network'.
- E-mail ~ 7 hrs/wk: It may seem like a silly item, but everyone is feeling overwhelmed with the amount of email from LEAD, Career Services, Student Groups, each other, etc. Now, I am a self-professed internet junkie, but I've found myself lately spending much less time surfing and much more time focused on getting through the inbox.

Grand total = 78 hours per week. Once midterm season comes around and companies start presentations on campus, one can safely assume another 15 hours devoted to this, which makes it a 90+ hour week.

[End Calculation]

Is it ANY WONDER that we're not sleeping enough, or that many bloggers are struggling to post on a regular basis? And for those individuals that were a part of your life before school (significant other, family, friends), its a struggle to maintain contact. I wasn't sure how well I would adjust to life away from my family and friends in California. You'll likely brand me a heartless soul for thinking so, but I honestly haven't had TIME TO MISS them.

Some things have already started to slip (reading has morphed into skimming, pre-work being done 10 minutes before class), and more will slip once recruiters come to town. This is why having a focused career goal before school starts is so darned important - you simply don't have enough time to explore everything under the sun and still attend class/sleep/socialize/e-mail/do whatever else 'needs' to be done. My list of 'needs to be done' is quickly shrinking - most of the items have gone into the 'would be nice to do if I had the time' list.

Notice that 'blogging' didn't figure in the calculations... I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet, but it has been relegated to the 'would be nice to do if I had the time' list.

[End RANT]

In other news, GND (Grade Non-Disclosure) vote is coming up soon for us, and I wanted to point out an articulate post by DirtyC addressing this issue.