7 october 2025
Woke up to an email about an extension on a paper, which is a relief. I've finished up my rough draft (it's in the 'I could submit this in a pinch, but it would benefit from another pass of adding a smidge more content and rereading it for egregious typos,' though knowing when you've hit a minimally viable product is an important time management skill in general, especially with fluctuating capacity) which is super sweet. A week extra! I'm going to focus on a few higher priority (see: due date impending) items, and then revisit that after the group slides.
I totally forgot that Monday is Thanksgiving, which means that the grad study space is closed, unfortunately. Boo. I'll just have to WFH then, but I'm not looking forward to it- these days, I mostly just return to the apartment to sleep. I find that having the separation of an actual studying space makes a big difference, especially since I don't have any sort of office or desk space, like a lot of my other peers. (Sad.)
My backpack felt a lot lighter today. Turns out that reducing packaging (hah) and also following some packing principles from hikers (heaviest closest to your back) makes a huge difference. I love it when random things I've learned in other contexts come in handy in entirely different scenarios. Makes me feel like a jack of all trades.
Wound up housing lunch down in one of the bookable (system's broken) study rooms, and they do surprisingly cut out a lot of sound, considering they're physically blocked off from the main space, unlike a lot of other rooms, which was a surprise. Can't turn off the lights in them, though, so that's frustrating. But I mostly focused on reviewing some more literature for my thesis today, and emailed a group project cluster- we've at least agreed on a topic and different media of contact, so I just have to iron out the details of that for study week.
Very sleepy. The rain makes the city so much darker. Unexpectedly ran into a classmate, and it was nice to chitchat briefly and say hello. Apparently today is normally his day off. I think I probably get the most use out of this space compared to anyone in our cohort, and it's largely because I prefer to be physically on campus versus not while doing work. The commute's a bit of annoyance, but it really isn't so bad. Going to head back soon. Have quite a lot of laundry that needs to be done... But I might put that off towards the weekend, I'm not sure. I've been exhausted as of late.
At least I got all of my writing by hand done. And tomorrow is the department coffee mixer. So that'll be nice... And next week we don't have classes, even if I still am going to commute down to campus to get work done, assuming the building is still open, which it should be, as the engineering students don't get the week off.