Now, THAT's the life!

I love January. It's one of the few times during the year where there are little to no pesky undergrads running around and driving like idiots. Also, I can drive through campus without having to stop at every cross walk. I also don't have to wait at a stop light when it's green due to people jaywalking because that whole 2 minutes they'd have to wait for a "walk" signal is just too long.

I don't hate undergrads in general (it really wasn't that long ago that I was one of them), but the undergrads at my current university do tend to drive me a bit batty on a regular basis. I suspect that they are drunk most of the time, if my current neighbors are any indication.

So January is great as I said; classes don't start again until the beginning of February, so the campus is relatively empty and I don't have any set times to go into school. Since I do all of my work on my own laptop (or by ssh-ing into a lab) it doesn't matter where I work. So what have I done so far? Well, I went into school 2 days last week but have otherwise worked on the couch in my pajamas. I have actually gone over to my advisor's house for 2 meetings, but that is much better than sitting in my windowless lab with dubious temperature controls. Surprisingly, I have been more productive this way. I plan to continue this trend as long as it works, even into the semester, as I only have 1 class and my advisor will be out of town in general. That means I only have 2 hours/week + 1 meeting that requires me to be at school!

Of course, I also just bought a PS2 so that I could finally play Kingdom Hearts, so I have one more temptation at home besides my still unfinished cross-stitch. So far I have gotten at least a solid 5 hours of work done each day (including the weekend), which realistically equates to over 8 hours of work in the lab (come on, you know you get distracted at work as well). Since this was all paper writing, I think that's pretty good. I'll start doing more hours/day for the rest of the break, but it was a nice way to start off the month that is supposed to be ultra productive.

Too bad this is the last Jan-term; next year they are starting classes in the middle of January! At least that will make the summer longer...