{"id":1948,"date":"2013-11-09T10:37:49","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T08:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/?p=1948"},"modified":"2013-11-09T10:37:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T08:37:49","slug":"all-work-and-almost-no-play-makes-rodney-a-dull-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/?p=1948","title":{"rendered":"All Work and (almost) No Play Makes Rodney a Dull Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So now having been through 10 weeks of work and 10 weeks of school, I have learned a lot of things. Fortunately, most of those things have been nice \ud83d\ude42 I will share a selection of them:<\/p>\n<p><strong>School<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For the most part, I go to school with some very awesome people! All of my groups have been really supportive of the fact that I study and work full-time. So it might mean that we have to meet at times where they would prefer to be free or something like that. And in every instance they have been accommodating. I should say that two of my three groups have been amazing to work with. I have learned a lot with them and from them.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t use my job as a reason not to do my fair share of group-based work (at least I hope I don&#8217;t). Yes, there are times when I simply can&#8217;t be in the lecture or the seminar because work has to come first. But I resolved in my mind before I started that I wouldn&#8217;t be one of those people who don&#8217;t pull their own weight in the group.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Sometimes I think my professors take my work schedule and plan important events to purposefully conflict \ud83d\ude42 Some professors seems to get this right every time. Luckily there has always been a solution everyone can live with.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>I underestimated the amount of effort involved when our courses start up. In Sweden, which is probably a bit different than US schools, each semester has two blocks that are about 8-10 weeks long. So it means that at two points in the semester you have intense start-up activities. Didn&#8217;t see that coming, but I am coping well&#8230;even if it requires that I take a day off of work here or there to make it possible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Work<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I am still loving my new job. I am still very happy that I made the move from IBM to HP. I miss people for sure, but I don&#8217;t have any regrets.<\/li>\n<li>My boss has been amazingly flexible and understanding about school. Generally I can manage quite well between school and work. There are some school assignments and dates that are mandatory, but I still always put in my 50+ hours to get things done.<\/li>\n<li>There are some things that are common to all multi-national corporations, no matter where you go. That is mostly good and has helped make the transition a bit easier.<\/li>\n<li>Did I mention I am still very happy? \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So for all of this, what does it mean in practical terms.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I had to make a conscious choice to really scale back my social life for the next 2 years. So please, if I am not as responsive or declining invites, it&#8217;s not personally. It might be strange, but <strong>please don&#8217;t stop sending<\/strong> invites \ud83d\ude42 They are psychological proof that somewhere out there I still have friends \ud83d\ude42 Meetings for coffees or food work better than big nights out.<\/li>\n<li>I am thankful for my car. I couldn&#8217;t make this work without one! Connected to this is the fact that\u00a0I am thankful that my classes are reasonably accessible by car. Some locations are easier than others, but it helps me to make things work.<\/li>\n<li>Coffee is my friend. It is my constant companion.<\/li>\n<li>I have learned to enjoy my friend&#8217;s Facebook photos and stories of the weekend as if they were my own. In the last 10 weeks I have only had 1 weekend where there was no studying or work involved. Keep those pictures and stories coming! \ud83d\ude42 I live vicariously through all of you these days.<\/li>\n<li>There such a thing as 04.30 in the morning. And more important I learned that it&#8217;s a great time to catch up on e-mails and reading over a cup of coffee. Or three.<\/li>\n<li>Shamefully, within the last 10 weeks, I have been to the McDonalds twice as much as I have been to the my gym which is one door over. I have started to change that now.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m understanding again why students cook things in large quantities. What you might give up in taste, you make up in time.<\/li>\n<li>BBC Knowledge TV is a great way to procrastinate and kill some time in a way where you don&#8217;t feel completely bad for it because you&#8217;ve learned something in the process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Despite all of this, I still feel I can do this. It hasn&#8217;t been an easy semester (in fact I am not even sure I passed by first two courses), nor has work been easy in any sense of the word. But I can say that I am using the knowledge and experience from both work and school to compliment each other. And combined with the great people I am meeting along the way &#8211; that makes me happy \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So now having been through 10 weeks of work and 10 weeks of school, I have learned a lot of things. Fortunately, most of those things have been nice \ud83d\ude42 I will share a selection of them: School For the most part, I go to school with some very awesome people! All of my groups &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/?p=1948\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">All Work and (almost) No Play Makes Rodney a Dull Guy<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,53,32],"tags":[59,15,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1950,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions\/1950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rodneycornelius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}