Saturday, September 12, 2009

New Definition of Weekend

"The two days a week in which schoolwork is interrupted by errands and household tasks rather than class."

Some of the great features of the weekend include:
* sleeping in (today until 9:00)
* not having to carry my life in a backpack across campus
* on Friday & Saturday, not having a list of things I must do before falling asleep so I am ready for school the next day (right now, the other days are driven by this demand)

I would like to say that no new work can arise on the weekend, but this isn't true. Damn email. At least this is relatively infrequent (so far).

Sundays are going to be a bit more do-or-die than before since my Monday morning schedule has gotten tighter.
Advisor meeting 8:30 - 9:30
Class 10:00 - 11:00
Lunch (while reading)
Lecture for class I TA (12:00 - 12:50)
Class 1:00 - 3:00

I spent several hours on Friday morning trying to print 5 PDF files (journal articles). There was no obvious pattern of when the article would print correctly, print only the first page, or not print at all. I ended up switching between two different printers when one appeared to stop working for me altogether. My new printer at home works fine, and it prints double-sided (though it requires a manual re-feed of the paper), but it requires watching since it spits the printed pages out so forcefully that about half the time, they spill onto the floor. (This is esp. problematic given the need to have them in order for the re-feed process; it's kind of tough to order pages when you are looking at every-other page of text.)

I think I am going to have to retrain myself to read journal articles on the computer and take notes somehow. The time/expense/weight associated with printing everything I need to read is probably not going to be viable as the semester progresses. But this goes against the grain for me in a major way. We'll see.

OK, the washing machine and social psychology articles are calling for attention...

2 comments:

mom said...

Our printer just quits printing all together sometimes and it requires a reloading of the software to get it to print again. This makes no sense.

Tam said...

If you're using an inkjet printer, you might consider laser. They're very fast and don't require new cartridges anywhere near as often. If you don't need color they're not very expensive either.