Day in the Life: Tuesday

On my Q&A post, a couple people suggested that I do a sort of "Day in the Life of Katie" post, describing how I manage my time, etc. So, I kept track of what I did all day last Tuesday and Wednesday (My Mon/Wed schedule is WAY different from Tues/Thur, so I thought I'd do one of each). 


I think you'll see from this hourly breakdown that I totally DO NOT have it all together all the time. I don't always manage my time really well, and my weekdays are pretty much crazy. I don't really ever work out anymore (thanks law school), and stuff like seeing family and having fun and writing blog posts usually has to wait until the weekends. Monday through Thursday are pretty much all law school (with a little time for eating and cleaning and seeing my husband thrown in). Also, I tend to not sleep as much as I should. But, it all works out somehow! 


Here's my Tuesday:


7:00 My alarm goes off. I know it's too early in the semester to start pushing back my wake-up time, but I hit the snooze button anyway. I didn't go to bed until 1:30am the night before, so I figure I deserve it.

7:15 I get up (just a little late!), and start getting ready for the day.

7:50 Jeff gets up. I get a little jealous once again of his super-short 10-minute drive to work, but I remind myself that I love our house in the suburbs and it's definitely worth a little traffic in the mornings. I know I need to leave in ten minutes, so I hastily try to make my hair look presentable. It's one of those "good enough" days.

Ready to go!

8:05 I'm headed out the door. I grab my coffee (french vanilla flavored coffee with french vanilla creamer), and a Yoplait yogurt. I take the lid off the yogurt and stick in a plastic spoon. Today it's pineapple yogurt, and it'll be my breakfast in the car when I hit the traffic near Downtown. 

Breakfast of champions.

8:10 Mazda's check engine light is on. I tell him to stop complaining and be a good car, but it doesn't go off. Don't things like that always happen when you really don't need one more thing to worry about?

8:40 I arrive at school. The drive went quickly today! I head to my first class, Business Organizations.

8:50 I'm in my classroom with my laptop all set up. I check my email, look at today's schedule in my planner, and get my notes ready for class.

9:00 Class starts - Business Organizations.

My Bus Org Professor

(source)

I'm paying attention and typing notes, but I've also got a few other things to get done during this hour and a half. Multi-tasking whenever possible is the key to success in law school (and probably the key to my sanity too). I make sure today's blog post went up correctly (it did), and I post the link to it on Twitter and Facebook. I answer a few e-mails from 1L (first-year) students in Corporate and Taxation Law Society (I'm on the 2L leadership board).

I also start working on this week's Law Review assignment. We're compiling a database of all the sources an author used in her article's footnotes (original copies of everything). I begin with the journal articles, which I can simply download in PDF form from a library database and then upload to the Law Review server. 

10:20 Class is done, and I've succeeded in understanding the material we discussed as well as checking a few other things off my to-do list. I head down to the Law Review office. It's time for a bagel break! One of the BigLaw firms in Houston has bagels and coffee delivered to the Law Review office every Tuesday. I'm not sure if it's because they want us to want to work for them, or if they just want to be nice, but I'm not complaining! I take ten minutes to just eat a bagel and chat with some friends.

10:30 I have "Member on Duty" hours for Law Review for the next hour and a half. We each have three hours each week that we're scheduled to be in the office. It takes way more than 3 hours to get all your work done each week, but we have to be there for those three scheduled hours. I continue working on the source database, this time starting with the statutes and books, which I need to find in the Law Library. 

12:00 I reach a stopping point on my Law Review stuff. It's time for a meeting with the Aggie Law Society leadership board. We plan our meeting dates for the Spring semester, schedule a Happy Hour for next Friday, and toss around a few ideas about community service events. 

"The Commons" - location of the ALS meeting

12:30 The Aggie Law Society meeting is over. I head back to the Law Review office. It's not time for my scheduled hours anymore, but I still have a lot of work to do. I realize I haven't eaten my lunch, but I'm on a roll with this Law Review stuff so I decide to wait until later. I continue finding sources and scanning them into the database.

2:00 I stop working on my Law Review stuff because I have a meeting with my editor about the big paper I've been writing. We all have to write a "paper of publishable quality" for Law Review, and the best 15 or so will get published next year. I turned in my rough draft of the whole thing (78 pages!) a couple weeks ago, so this meeting is to discuss the rough draft.

2:30 I'm done meeting with my editor. She had a lot of great suggestions and caught a few typos that I missed, so it was a productive meeting! She thinks I have a great shot at being published, which was nice to hear! I start packing up my stuff to head home. I still haven't eaten lunch, but I don't want to stay at school any longer.

Leaving the Law Center - everyday, this is the best part of my day! Haha. 

2:45 I'm in my car, headed home. It always takes at least fifteen minutes to actually pack everything up and tell people goodbye and find my car in the big parking lot. 

Uneaten Lunch... oops.

I get stuck at a red light on the way out of campus, so I pull out my phone and pick a recipe for dinner. I decide I need to stop for a few groceries on my way home.

It's so convenient having my favorite recipes on the Internet rather than in a binder or something!

3:10 I pull into the Wal-Mart parking lot. I actually prefer Kroger, but Wal-Mart is about two minutes from our house, and Kroger is about 15. Wal-Mart doesn't go very well. They're out of shredded Swiss (I buy colby jack instead) and out of real bacon bits (I buy the turkey kind instead). However, after six months of not stocking zucchini, they do have that! I can't resist taking a couple with me (zucchini cakes! zucchini bread!).

3:37 I leave Wal-Mart and head home.

3:40 I arrive at home (told you Wal-Mart is really close to our house!). I unload the groceries and do a mini-clean-out of the fridge (throwing away some old leftovers and produce that we didn't quite finish and wiping down the shelves). I finally heat up my lunch (leftover baked pasta with chicken sausage) and watch an episode of Friends while eating.

4:30 I put a load of laundry into the washer. Another key to succeeding in law school is to divide your life into two categories: "Law school" and "Breaks from law school." Things like laundry and cleaning the house go into the "breaks" category, so they actually become pretty pleasant. Even eating lunch becomes a nice change of pace from all the reading and studying. Once my eating-lunch-and-doing-laundry break is over, it's time to start reading for tomorrow's classes. I start with Business Organizations.

5:30 Jeff gets home. I take a break for kisses and the daily "how was your day?" discussion. Today, it turns into a long conversation about my journal article. Based on my meeting with my editor, it looks like there's a pretty good chance it could get published, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. It would be a great thing for my career, except that my paper is on a pretty controversial topic. I'm not sure I want to permanently attach my name to a paper that takes a strong position on a sharply divided issue. Jeff and I discuss the pros and cons, morality vs. legality, etc. We didn't arrive at a solution, but it made me feel better to just talk it out. 

6:30 Jeff takes Mazda to Advance Auto Parts to have them run a diagnostic on the check engine light. I go back to my Business Organizations reading. I take another break to fold the laundry and put it away. Then, more reading.

Laundry!

7:00 Jeff gets home. Mazda needs a new thermostat. Jeff bought the part, and he thinks he can do it himself. I tell Mazda to be a brave little car, and Jeff starts poking around under the hood. I start getting dinner ready - a frittata with spinach, mushrooms, and bacon. 

7:20 The frittata goes in the oven, and I start cleaning up the kitchen.

7:30 Jeff comes inside with the final verdict - he can't fix the car himself after all. Apparently parts of the engine have to come out in order to get to the thermostat. I get a little bothered that we're going to have to spend (potentially lots) of money on something unexpected, but I accept it (that's just part of owning a car, and that's why we have a liquid savings account). Note: we later found out Mazda needed $1200 worth of repairs. Definitely one of those "isn't being a grown-up such fun?" moments.

I continue cleaning the kitchen. I can either keep cleaning or go back to reading for class, so I (of course) choose cleaning.  I clean all the counters with the granite spray, start the dishwasher, clean the stovetop, wipe down the appliances with the stainless steel spray, and empty the trash. I water all the houseplants and empty the trash cans in the downstairs bathrooms. I cut some little stems off one of my house plants and put them in my newest fun vase ($3.99 at HomeGoods!). 

This stuff is the BEST for cleaning stainless steel!

So cute!

I love finding stuff like this at HomeGoods!

8:00 The kitchen's clean and the frittata's done. We sit on the couch to eat and watch the last episode of Big Bang Theory from the DVR. 

Yummy frittata!

Clean kitchen!

8:45 I put another load of laundry in the washer and go back to my Business Organizations reading. I'm getting really sick of that textbook.

9:30 I finish with the Bus Org stuff and take a quick break to go through my Google Reader. The Google Reader break turns into a Google Reader + Twitter + Facebook + Pinterest break. Oops.

9:50 Back to school stuff. Next up, Trusts & Wills. 

10:30 The laundry's done, but Jeff folds it so I can keep reading. The load was 90% his t-shirts anyway, so this works well. Thanks husband!

11:30 I take a break for a little prayer time. I don't get very much quality Bible-reading time anymore (because usually the LAST thing I want to do in addition to all my law school reading is read another book), but I try to make room for some quiet time with God in whatever way possible. I really feel like God wants me to be doing this whole law school thing, so I think He understands when I can't read my Bible as much as I used to. Today, I'm praying St. Theresa's prayer. I try to think about each line individually and re-focus myself on my relationship with God.

(source)

12:00 Back to reading for school. I wish I could go to bed.

12:45 Trusts & Wills reading is done. I turn on the shower and pack my school stuff for tomorrow while the water's heating up (again, multitasking whenever possible!). 

1:10 I'm out of the shower and ready for bed. I wake up Jeff, who's asleep in a chair in the living room. I say a quick prayer that we both make it to Friday without dying of exhaustion. 

While Jeff takes a shower, I plug in my phone and computer to charge overnight. I pack a lunch and dinner to take to school the next day. I check my email one last time and reply to a couple things. I set my alarm a little early because there's supposed to be a storm coming (and traffic is always worse when it's raining). 

1:30 We get into bed. Jeff falls asleep instantly. I lie awake thinking about how I have to wake up in a little over five hours. By the time I do fall asleep, I'm down to a little under five hours. 


So... that's pretty much how a typical Tuesday goes. Doesn't that make you want to go to law school? Haha. Like I said, stuff like seeing family/friends, cooking fancy dinners, updating the blog, and doing DIY projects usually has to wait until the weekends. I'll post my Wednesday "day in the life" later this week (spoiler alert: it's over 12 hours spent at school)!