Today, I am writing a paper that is due on Monday. I started seriously reading for it on Tuesday of this week. This was not so much procrastination or waiting for the last minute as much as it was not managing my time well enough to either not let the holidays derail my reading, writing, and study time as well as underestimating the time it would take me to write a 5,000-word paper. Which I am almost done with. I have the added bonus of having to have Jesse drive me to Belgium to take one of my other exams on Monday since the exam is at 9 am on Tuesday. I still have to review for that one. So basically, exams are kind of kicking my ass at the moment. Mostly—entirely? No. Definitely, mostly because requiring that I be on campus for an exam, especially considering how far I need to travel to sit for it, is insane. For context, the drive is 10 hours, but Jesse and I usually make it in 12. The flight is about an hour. BUT if I flew, I would have to spend ten days in quarantine and since we no longer have a house there, that would be an expensive AirBnb. So we are driving. With driving, if we are in Belgium for under 48 hours, we do not have to quarantine. This is a bit of a loophole I guess. But since we never see anyone, I count my time spent in our isolated vacation rental enough of a quarantine.
Mini-rant out of the way, over the coming days, my posts will be much shorter as I finish this paper, study for an exam, drive to and from Belgium in under 48 hours, finish a last PhD application, submit an excerpt from my thesis, and start studying for my final exam which will be online and the following week. But soon, they will be back to their usual length and will branch into more research-related topics that I am excited to explore with you.