A Day In The Life: Yuri

MONDAY

8:30 am

A typical Monday morning: jump out of bed, speed-brush my teeth (thoroughly), shovel down whatever piece of dining hall fruit happens to be lying on my table, shove a Study sandwich into my backpack along with 912784759839 crumpled papers, and speed-walk out the door.

A familiar view as I run to work

I swear, I'm an organized person.

It should be about 8:45 by now, always a little later than I hope to leave the dorm, because that's just who I am. Time just seems to have a way of disappearing when I need it the most.

I need to get to work in the medical plaza by 9 am, and if I speed a little faster, I can shave a couple minutes off Google's predicted ETA and get there on time. It's a comfortably anxiety-inducing routine by now.

Ah, how I do (not) love mornings.

9 am - 12 pm

I'm a work study student at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, a name far too long and complicated to represent what I actually do.

almost....THERE......!!!

My job is mostly administrative: organizing samples, updating Excel spreadsheets, picking up samples in a different building, and generally maintaining and helping out the lab where I can.

Recently, I've been working on finding samples for a specific study in the freezers and pulling the IDs that need to be processed.

The people at work have also recently begun to train me in processing samples (such as blood serum, plasma, DNA, RNA, and nuclear proteins), introducing me to some basic lab protocols. Half of the time, I'm almost sick with nerves that I'm going to accidentally destroy or drop some precious sample, but it's gotten progressively better over the weeks! I'm on my way to becoming semi-functional.

12 pm - 12:30 pm

I wheeze my way back up the Hill and sit at the tables outside of Sproul Hall. My upcoming lecture is right next to Sproul, so this gives me a bit of security as I inhale the Study sandwich that I packed this morning.

12:30 pm - 1:45 pm

Biotechnology and Society Cluster lecture at Northwest Auditorium

Dr. Dale Bredesen gives a guest lecture on Alzheimer's

1:45 pm - 2 pm

For the second time in one day, I wheeze my way back down the Hill, this time racing to Young Hall in South campus. Need to...need to get in shape...

2 pm - 2:50 pm

Chemistry and Biochemistry 14B

wiping off my sweat as I listen to lecture

3 pm - 3:50 pm

Life Sciences 30B

The midterm for this class is later today!

4 pm - 5 pm

This is the weird one hour gap in my schedule when I usually vegetate and feel catatonic. I also usually daydream about food and lament about how hungry I am. And for this reason, I also usually go to my research lab early, where there is unfailingly a horrendously unhealthy snack basket that I raid without shame.

the reason why I'll have diabetes by the time I'm 20

5 pm - 5:40 pm (usually until 7 pm though)

I'm part of a psychology lab studying violent deaths (suicides and homicides) in LGBT+ and racial minority communities. During lab hours, which means sitting in a small computer lab alone, I read over the narratives that we've been assigned for the week and code for criteria in each narrative. The criteria could be 'bullying' or 'LGBT discrimination', to name a few, and we would code a '1' if it appears in the narrative and '0' if it doesn't, based on our standardized definitions of each.

It's heavy material to read at times, but I care deeply about this topic and am hopeful about the impact of our research.

5:45 pm - 7:15 pm

On this particular Monday, I had a midterm for LS30B, but otherwise I would have been in the lab until 7 pm. Thankfully, the midterm ended up very manageable (God bless Jukka), and I ended up leaving early, in time to see...

7:30 pm

GOATS!!! THERE WERE BABY GOATS OUTSIDE OF RIEBER HALL!

I'm not sure how the goats were relevant to the voting registration event that they seemed to be associated with, but hey, never a bad time for baby goats.

Regardless of their relevance to voting, I enjoyed getting to pet some fluffy cuteness, although it really just felt like we were collectively transferring our anxiety to those poor animals. I imagine that all those hands reaching for them feel like the claws of all my assignments chasing after me.

Some of them looked overwhelmed, perhaps a tad traumatized.

I can relate, baby goats, I can relate.

8 pm - 9:30 pm

I eat pretty irregular meals during the day (if at all), being so busy, so dinner is a time to unwind and relax. More often than not, I'll be enjoying my one dining hall meal of the day, but on this particular Monday, I ended up eating a bowl of instant ramen for dinner (my form of comfort food) and swiping a sandwich from Bcafe to bring to campus tomorrow for lunch.

This is also my daily time to just vegetate in my room or my bed and struggle not to fall asleep. I usually watch some Youtube, scroll through social media, check my emails, and respond to messages. It's a time to catch up with what I've missed during the day.

Around 9:30 pm (actually more like 10 pm)

It's always around this time of the night that time begins to warp, and along with it, my brain. I'll be talking to my roommates or doing some odd chore, and then all of a sudden it's already past 10 pm. Every day seems like a battle against time.

Around this time, I'll drag myself from whatever I'm doing and sit down to get some work done. The urge to procrastinate hits hard, but seeing my roommates slaving so diligently over their assignments guilts me into also doing my homework.

squeezing the last drops of productivity out of myself

I was able to get a start on a chemistry quiz due Wednesday, work on a paper for my cluster, and write this blog post actually.

I also use a bullet journal quite regularly to keep track of what I need to do, and I'll just dump everything I can think of onto the pages, even small reminders like picking up mail.

And ironically, even though I hate mornings, I find that I function best after I wake up. So when I just can't find the willpower to go on any longer, I'll write down a list of anything that needs to be completed before I leave the dorm tomorrow morning and just call it a night.

This is when my 45628746 alarms make an appearance, as I often drag myself out of bed at random hours of the night (morning?) to finish up work. It is every bit as excruciating as it sounds, but I find that it works much better for me than staying up all night without sleep. I need those couple hours first.

My deepest, sincerest apologies to my roommates.

Around 12 am

Take a shower and go to sleep. Monday nights are great because my earliest class the next day is at 9:30, so I have half an hour more than usual of sweet, sweet slumber.

Good night!