Making your schedule for the upcoming semester is always interesting. Trying to plan out how early you want to wake up or how many back-to-back classes you can handle in a day. There is always some level of disappointment whether you didn’t get your first choice for a section or the elective you wanted is completely full, but by the end of it, you usually can make peace with whatever you end up with.
This semester, my schedule is somewhat lopsided. Tuesdays through Fridays, three classes a day, all roughly at the same time. However, I have a single class on Monday at 1 p.m. So far, this has led to my week feeling uneven. I am a person who likes a solid routine, but I also have trouble sticking to it. Tuesday through Friday is great. I wake up at the same time, am in class at about the same time, have a break at the same time, and then I study and do my work at the same time. Of course there is some variation with club meetings and whatever else may happen in a week, but at its core those four days are relatively identical.
When Monday rolls around, I have an issue. I’m usually still exhausted from Sunday, so sleeping in should be a good option. That works in theory, but in reality, with nothing to get up for until 1 p.m., it has led to me sleeping in till noon for the first few weeks of school. Now with midterms starting and my workload starting to ramp up, I cannot afford to waste time like that no matter how good it feels getting damn near 12 hours of sleep.
So, what to do? I have had no issue being productive after my single class on Mondays, but it would be really nice to utilize the five or so hours before I have to start moving. I tried going to the gym in the morning one week, but it was not as enjoyable as going in the afternoon. Another week I tried going out for breakfast at a spot in Hoboken. This was fun and got me to do work afterwards, but I’m not made of money, so doing this every week would not be sustainable.
And now, it is Sunday night, and I am wondering what I am going to do tomorrow morning. The alarm is already set for 8:30 a.m. Hopefully when I wake up, I can find something to do and not feel like I am wasting away my day.
That’s the interesting thing about scheduling classes. Before college, this was never an issue. I knew exactly what I’d be doing from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. Now, there is an entire day of uncertainty. Going forward, I doubt I’ll make a schedule like this again. Either I’ll try to condense all my classes to four days, or I’ll pick different sections, so I have something to do every day. Who knows? Next semester is a ways off anyways.
For now, I have to live with my decision and make the best of it. Find some way to be productive. Regardless of what I do, Mondays will come and go. Hopefully I can find a way to make them feel less like a lopsided weekday and more like any other day of the week.
