As a graduate student, you have tremendous freedom to set your own work schedule. This can be good and bad.
This summer, I decided that for the purposes of doing good research, it was beneficial for me to let myself get a normal amount of sleep -- i.e. don't wake up to an alarm. This worked well (I think) for a while at least, as I came into work refreshed and ready to work.
However, the summer came and went much quicker than anticipated, and now looking back I realize that too often my work day wouldn't start until 11a or even noon, yet I wouldn't properly compensate for this by working additional hours at the end of the day. There are simply too many evening activities that can come up (e.g. dinner, girlfriends) that interfere with the evening, along with the slow onset of depression that accompanies the natural seasonal cycle -- as July and August passed, the sun sets earlier and earlier.
Thus, to take control of this I decided last week to make a significant adjustment to my daily life schedule. It's the start of the Fall semester, which means that in addition to research, I am also now TAing a class and sitting in on a couple of others. So every day I woke up at 6am (with the added convenience that my girlfriend, a teacher, also begins her day at that time) and got myself to work by 730am.
It's only been one week, but needless to say it's feels like a huge improvement. One thing that I value tremendously is that, when you start your day at 730am, by 5 or 6pm, you know that you've put in a long, hard day of work, which means you have no guilt about packing up, going home, and forgetting about work for the rest of the evening. Knowing that you have a solid 3-4 hours where you can eat and enjoy life before bed is a wonderful feeling.
Perhaps more importantly, this shift restores a personal sense of adulthood and responsibility. Though it's fun to feel lucky that you don't have a real "job", the ambiguity of the bounds of the "grad school experience" can often leave one lacking a sense of professional identity.
And today, a Saturday, I feel for the first time like I actually earned a weekend of relaxation. And a long one at that: after 4 consecutive days waking up at 6am, it turns out sleeping past 830a is quite difficult, even after going to bed at 2am. :)
This summer, I decided that for the purposes of doing good research, it was beneficial for me to let myself get a normal amount of sleep -- i.e. don't wake up to an alarm. This worked well (I think) for a while at least, as I came into work refreshed and ready to work.
However, the summer came and went much quicker than anticipated, and now looking back I realize that too often my work day wouldn't start until 11a or even noon, yet I wouldn't properly compensate for this by working additional hours at the end of the day. There are simply too many evening activities that can come up (e.g. dinner, girlfriends) that interfere with the evening, along with the slow onset of depression that accompanies the natural seasonal cycle -- as July and August passed, the sun sets earlier and earlier.
Thus, to take control of this I decided last week to make a significant adjustment to my daily life schedule. It's the start of the Fall semester, which means that in addition to research, I am also now TAing a class and sitting in on a couple of others. So every day I woke up at 6am (with the added convenience that my girlfriend, a teacher, also begins her day at that time) and got myself to work by 730am.
It's only been one week, but needless to say it's feels like a huge improvement. One thing that I value tremendously is that, when you start your day at 730am, by 5 or 6pm, you know that you've put in a long, hard day of work, which means you have no guilt about packing up, going home, and forgetting about work for the rest of the evening. Knowing that you have a solid 3-4 hours where you can eat and enjoy life before bed is a wonderful feeling.
Perhaps more importantly, this shift restores a personal sense of adulthood and responsibility. Though it's fun to feel lucky that you don't have a real "job", the ambiguity of the bounds of the "grad school experience" can often leave one lacking a sense of professional identity.
And today, a Saturday, I feel for the first time like I actually earned a weekend of relaxation. And a long one at that: after 4 consecutive days waking up at 6am, it turns out sleeping past 830a is quite difficult, even after going to bed at 2am. :)
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