Why I Haven't Blogged: Chapter 1

I'm very fortunate to be attending a medical school that offers their students informational sessions that they believe to be beneficial to their students.  One such session was held last week, and we were graciously given a speech on financial aid, specifically to paint the picture of the debt an average medical student will incur over a 25 year plan.  They offered us a very grim, sobering, and astonishing number of $900,000.  

moving on....

The next session was held today.  It was a planning session that gave us an idea of how to build our schedules.  They had us make a list of everything we cannot survive a week without.  They then gave us a grid that listed days of the week on top and all the hours in the day to the side.  Yes, it was a time table and we were to fill it out.

I'll skip the gory stuff and get straight to the moral of the story.  My life now, divided into hours:

(How much a day I need to spend doing the following activities)

Sleep: 7 hours 

Attending lecture: 4 hours

Attending lab: ~3-4 hours

Study: 5-5.5 hours

Eat meals (3): 1.5 hours

Commuting, getting ready (hygiene), and staring at a wall to relax: 2 hours

Totaling the high end of every one of those activities: 24 hours

Notice what is NOT on that list?  Spending time with Tad, spending time with my family, spending time with my friends, grocery shopping, doing laundry, cleaning my apartment, exercising, reading, watching tv, etc, etc, etc....

Granted, my weekends will have a bit more free time... specifically, 10 hours more.  Yes, it's that technical.  

5pm- 12 am on Saturday: free time (to be spent with tad and friends) 

6 pm- 9 pm on Sundays (to be spent with family).  

Also, we have to keep in mind that this type of "weekend" will only happen every other weekend... as every other weekend is a test weekend. Test weekends will have 0 hours of free time and significantly less sleep.

I don't think I'm going to go to those sessions anymore.

(p.s.... don't be fooled by the title.  There will probably not be a chapter 2 for quite some time.)