Personal Woes Of A Second Year
When I sat down to apply for the NSF GRFP back in late October, my vision of the project had become blurry since its inception in April or May. I had submitted my manuscript for publication and traveled to Europe to spend my summer backpacking. Just before I left though, I interviewed for a new GA position with Research Computing, the team behind the HPC. They were looking to train someone to eventually be the system administrator’s assistant in order to give him some well deserved vacation.
While I was in Europe, the principal at the private school I substituted at contacted me and asked if I could teach Chemistry part time this coming school year. Their previous teacher (who had taught there for well over 20 years) had left without notice. After going back and forth deliberating on a proper schedule that wouldn’t interfere with my research and classes at U of M, I accepted their offer on the condition that my responsibilities at U of M would be my first priority after teaching my high school students. I wouldn’t be required to do any extracurriculars outside of teaching responsibilities which were all before lunch. They were going to pay me about as much as I was making on my Dept of Chemistry TA stipend, so I had basically doubled my income for something I thought would be easy.
Not more that a week after I signed my teaching contract, I got the word that Research Computing had picked me as their GA and that I should no longer TA this year. This was great, but now I’ve got two new jobs on the year every grad student says is the hardest. Once a month, I’ve got to take a cumulative exam in a topic of Chemistry I probably haven’t taken a class on in years (or in some cases, a class I’ve never taken). These are important exams that require at least a week of constant study. Finally, not to be outdone, my regular responsibilites kicked in. I’ve got to do research for my PhD. I’ve got Stat Mech coursework in the Physics department (go ask a couple of Physics grad students what was the hardest class they’ve taken, odds are someone will mention Stat Mech). On top of all of that, I got a kitty (pictures below).
I know your days get hard. Days also get easy. I look forward to the easier days. I’ve just finished up taking my finals in my grad coursework and giving my midterms in my high school classes, so hopefully those days are close. I’ve wondered what my schedule would look like if I included all the unscheduled things too. I’m not going to share some of the other things I’ve got going on, but its been therapeutic typing most of them out.
