Spring

Spring has been thawing my bones for a while now. It is simultaneously filling me full of enthusiasm whilst sapping away equal amounts of enthusiasm for sitting behind a computer and doing the study.

I allowed the garden to distract me long enough to document some of my spring garden. Mine because I live amidst it, not because I have any hand in it.



The very productive lemon tree.



Sweet little broad bean blossoms. Last season we had masses of beans but no recipes for them and alas they went to waste. I am intent to find ways to eat them this time around.



I think these guys are bluebells. more beans in the background.

It's so very hard to drag myself out of the perfect sunbeams and back to my masses of dark looming deadlines. I am thinking happy thoughts of warm nights, sangria and lashings of free time being little more than a month away.

Exam Lockdown

The time has come the walrus said to talk of many things...well actually the time has come to regurgitate all of the knowledge I have managed to retain from this semester of 'study'. So at the moment there is little time to do much other than cram.

I have ambitious plans for what little break I have between semesters, plans which I am trying not to distract myself with at the moment. See you then.

Get into the groove

Time

As I write it is midway through the second week of uni. Have I been sticking to my study timetable? Of course not.
Have I at least been going to all my classes? What am I a first year? No!

Okay, so far I have missed two lectures, one of which I have since listened to online, the other I will listen to once it's been uploaded.

I have been putting in nowhere near enough hours of study. I am slightly behind in my readings, but have more or less been prepared for any classes that involve interaction and have studied sufficiently for the two tests I've already had.

Most of my subjects have an open book exam at the end of the year which requires concise and ordered notes. I have so far in my university career failed to keep up to date with this during the semester and end up putting these notes together when I should be revising. Together with not doing enough work this has really reflected in my grades. I passed one subject last semester by 3 marks. Yes 3! I have a suspicion they were pity marks.

I really want to transfer into a combined degree as soon as possible so it is really important for me to get into the groove of studying every day to get my grades up. I seem to have difficulty studying in my huge breaks at uni, so I'm going to try focusing on these times and getting my routine tighter there.

I have however been finding the time to go to the gym, which brings me to:


Health

Last week I once again managed to get my lazy derriere to the gym 3 times! Four if you count the time I walked down to renew my membership but didn't actually go in passed the reception desk.

I still haven't moved from 75Kg (although my weigh in day is tomorrow, cross your fingers for me) BUT, I did notice a dress I used to have to squeeze myself into was a little roomy. My family have also made some really supportive comments about seeing some difference. So whether the numbers change when I get on those scales tomorrow or not this week I'm feeling pretty happy.

And finally tomorrow the lovely lady whose blog was the inspiration for me to start is doing a training session with me at uni tomorrow. She tells me she is going to work me hard. If I can get results like she is getting I'm sure it will be well worth it and then some.

See you holidays, it's been swell but the swelling's gone down.

After what has felt like a very non productive eternity I am going back to uni as of next Monday. This means that instead of dragging myself out of bed to face a day filled with nothing (much like this http://nedroid.com/2011/02/morning-motivation/)I will now be running out the door in order to get to morning classes. And then frantically trying to squish study into as many moments a day as I can, getting burned out and watching tv instead... Well hopefully that last bit doesn't happen so much this semester.

The bare bones of my timetable looks a little something like this (sorry for the rubbish table, I don't know html):

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
7
8
9		Class	Class	Class
10	Class
11
12		Class
1	Class
2				Class
3
4		Class	Class
5
6
7

I read somewhere that you should do about 2 hours study for each contact hour, but a) that would make for a 66 hour week b) last year I ended up needing significantly less study than this for the science units. So for the time being I'm blocking in 2 hours per contact hour for law subjects and 2 hours per subject per week for science - a neat 24 hours study time. Putting those in as well as travel time makes my timetable look like this:

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
7
8		Travel	Travel	Travel
9	Travel	Class	Class	Class	Study	Study
10	Class	Study
11			Study	Study
12		Class
1	Class
2			Study	Class	Study
3							Study
4		Class	Class
5	Travel
6	Study	Travel	Travel	Travel
7
8

Honestly, this looks pretty intense to a slacker like me. It does have room for the gym, socialising and cooking which will hopefully preserve my health (especially mental health - gosh) but I'm not going to block them in yet because I want to see how this works and what times for the gym are going to be best for other people so I can have gym buddies sometimes.

I'm going to try and keep to my sleeping schedule. I haven't kept to it strictly yet (which will sure make next week a shock to the system) but my hours are much more regular than before.

Lastly in other time news, I have finally found time to tick something off my eternal to do list. I have never donated blood. After two false starts where I was too sick on the date to donate, I am all booked in for this Sunday. I am feeling fighting fit and looking forward to it. Still on my list is to donate bone marrow. That is a much scarier prospect - ouch - and not as quick set up so it will take a while. But I think it's really important.

Have any of you donated blood, marrow or anything else? What were your experiences like?

Time

For someone who has spent the last six years in the nine to five, having no commitments work or school wise for periods of longer than four weeks is very strange. Over my Summer holidays I have already worked for about three months and traveled for one. I have been back in the country for about two weeks now, in that time I have done very little.

Strangely having very little to do seems to be a challenge when it comes to trying to organise a routine. When stepping off the plane I had visions (possibly a side effect of the blood rushing back into my body after being squeezed in my seat for so long) of getting right back into my circadian rhythms and having productive days filled with checking things off my to do lists.

The reality has been more to the tune of struggling to get out of bed because I have nothing pressing to do. Once I do get out I have little motivation to do anything, I may have a very leisurely breakfast... sometimes photographing it. Maybe go to the gym if it takes my fancy, which it usually doesn't. Perhaps do some house chores... this is a sign of how little I have to do, usually house work is the last thing I would think to do, ever.

If I decided to think very positively I would tell you that my sudden input into the cleaning of the house is a good use of my time and I should keep it up. I might go with that... it sounds pretty good.


Goal

At this stage I am going to aim just to get my sleeping under control.

The mighty inter-webs tells me I should get 7-8 hours per night. I'm thinking I should get up at 7am, generally the time my partner gets up when we are in the same place, he can be my unknowing encouragement, which means I need to go to bed around 11pm.

I'm going to see if I can stick to this for a week. If I can then I will add some more structure to the rest of my days.