Tag Archives: work life balance

Combating the 40 Hour Blues

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When I was in high school, I always argued with my parents about who had it harder. I was pretty sure that I did– I started school at 7:30 in the morning, often getting home at 6 or 7 after extracurriculars, only to be faced with a mountain of homework. Even on my lazy senior schedule of 7:30am-1:30pm, I was convinced that being a student was harder than being an adult worker. Maybe that was true in high school, with back to back classes and 7 classes worth of homework every night.

But I can definitely say that working 40 hours a week this summer has been more taxing than my first year of college. I definitely worked a lot my first year at Scripps, but the rhythm suited me. I woke up around 8:30, ate a leisurely breakfast, and had plenty of time to do reading, problem sets, and work on essays between classes and my work in Scripps IT Department. I saw my friends (especially the roomies) throughout the day, and almost always paused work for a long, social dinner. After 9 or 10, I declared my working brain dead, and did only fun things before I slept. I was remarkably unstressed compared to high school, and although I worked more and played less during finals and midterms, I was always surrounded by friends, in a beautiful environment, and could wear the comfiest or cutest clothes I wanted.

My work this summer has not been stressful–it’s an incredibly supportive environment, very focused on learning and professional growth for interns. But the rhythm of the “normal adult work week” , and the office environment, has been getting me down. I’m in a grey cubicle, in a huge windowless room, for most of my day. After work, I’m often ready to collapse in my bed, but I also desperately want social interaction with people my own age. That’s not as easy as it is at school, where everyone’s a 3 minute walk away (or zero minutes, when it comes to my lovely, lovely roomies). The weekends feel like they pass too quickly.

I still have a lot of professional interests that point at a 40 hour workweek for most of my future. So I’ve been trying to develop strategies to feel good on the grind.

1. Exercise! One of the great perks of my workplace is a free office gym, which is right next to my workspace. I’ve been going pretty regularly after work for the last week, and I feel great. I’ve been coming home after my workouts with much more energy to go out or get things done at home. Even just 30 minutes helps me transition out of late afternoon stupor.

2. Purposeful socializing I’m used to plans just falling into place casually, but when my free time is so limited–and many of my friends are also working–it takes a little more forethought. I’ve met up with friends working nearby for lunch, or to hang out right after work. I’ve been filling my weekends and nights much more than I’m used to. I’m an introvert, so usually I’m cautious about wearing myself out with too many plans. So when I feel super worn out, I just have one-on-one hangouts with people I don’t have to impress. It satisfies my people need without overwhelming me.

3. Sleep Sleep deprivation makes me grumpy and stressed and prone to eating sugary foods which exacerbate that mood. Sleep is great! It’s like free coffee.

4. Tea and snacks I love jasmine tea. Jasmine tea smells great, keeps me alert, and generally just keeps happiness levels high. There’s a water cooler with a hot faucet near me, so I make tea constantly. I also make sure to have little snacks on hand–Luna bars, veggies, sesame sticks, and beef jerky. I’ve found that a big lunch makes me sleepy, and then hungry two hours later. Snacks keep my energy levels constant throughout the day.

5. Books No, I don’t read at work, but my commute and time at home are so enriched by reading. I started with The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, which is like female empowerment steampunk-y scifi. Now I’m switching back and forth between Cryptonomicon, by the same author, and God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Even though my work is super interesting, it helps me to engage my brain with something totally unrelated. (I’m also watching multivariable calculus lectures online in preparation for fall semester. Yay for different modes of thinking!)

What are your happy strategies? 

Fullbridge Day 4: Consider the “Typical” 8-Hour Work Day

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To my readers, I would like to ask: How many of you are currently considering a career in business? And what do you imagine a “typical,” eight-hour work day to look like?

As I sit in front of the computer typing this up, I find myself surprised at the sparse amount of information I recorded just four days into the program. The fact is, working                      a so-called “typical” work day often lends itself to boredom, as I learned during my time with the Fullbridge Program.

Continuing with the theme of finance, day four focused on the income statement and the balance sheet. While I enjoy economics and business, I found some of the material to be a bit dry. Another day in front of the computers didn’t raise much excitement among us. On a random tangent, I will admit I was pleasantly surprised to notice many students (including myself) jotting down notes by hand. In the day of rapid technological advancement, I worry sometimes that everything’s gone digital all at once.

Much to everyone’s relief, today was also our first (and only) “casual day.” I actually shocked myself by showing up in sweatpants and a top, sneakers, and a beanie. For those who know me, this is not my usual attire. Appreciating “the little things in life” indeed.

On this day, I also found myself amazed by how quickly a one-hour lunch break comes and goes. Lunch seemed like a great relief the first few days; but by day four, the break became just another part of the usual routine.

Sitting in front of a computer eight hours a day, with a one-hour lunch break in-between, for the fourth day in a row, gave me perspective on what it would be like to have a desk job. If such were the case, I would invest in a comfortable chair. This is not a joke. Health and wellness must be taken into consideration, especially when one maintains a sedentary work life such as this. It is important to consider the cost/benefit of a particular career path, particularly since many require you to work upwards from a low-level desk job.

And aside from work, you may find it worthwhile to continue a hobby or sport of your liking– if only to maintain your sanity. But with one’s busy schedule, who has the time? Even as college students, we constantly struggle to balance a life of social interactions, academics, health, and sleep, to name a few. The particulars vary with each individual, but the idea holds true for most.

I strongly encourage you to figure out what a balanced lifestyle means to you, so as to be better prepared for the “real world” out there. The motley of clubs and activities we juggle in undergrad may be more than we can handle later on in life. Choosing to prioritize marriage, family members, and/or a time-heavy career will only add to this equation.

My purpose in sharing these thoughts is not to discourage you. Rather, I am trying to provide honest and realistic insight into the probability that you will one day work a job at which repetition may very well be the norm. You may wake up around the same time every day, receive a one-hour lunch break, go to the gym, take care of the kids, so on and so forth. Before you know it, a routine will start to develop– probably for the sake of efficiency and productivity. 

So while we’re still in college, I hope we can pause and take a moment to appreciate the freedom and spontaneity with which we can approach life.

 

Why I Am a Dance Minor but Will Probably Never Be a Professional Dancer

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This is me at one of my Irish dance competitions during high school. And yes, that is a wig.

I didn’t start taking dance classes until middle school, after having tendonitis in both legs put me almost a year behind my peers in gymnastics, but I instantly fell in love with them, and took everything from ballet to modern, to two different kinds of Irish dance. Right from my first semester of modern dance here, I knew I wanted to keep taking classes. I became a minor for two reasons: 1) because doing a dual major would have required some overloading, and 2) I was clear right from the start that I was becoming a dance minor because it was something I loved, not because I wanted a degree in it. One of the greatest things about having the privilege to go to a small liberal arts college is being able to do things just because you enjoy them, and that is my philosophy when it comes to my minor. Unlike classes for my major that I expect to stress over, I rarely find myself stressing over dance assignments, because they’re the “fun” that I balance all the hard work for my major with.

But what happens when I can’t dance – when I’m injured? Most people smile and laugh when I say that I spent my Thanksgiving break lying in bed and watching television. The part I don’t necessarily include is that I was doing it because I currently have injuries in my right hip and left ankle, and moving around a lot right now is painful. It tends to result a couple of hours of lying still with ice alternating between my hip and ankle, and lots of ibuprofen (and yes that is what happened after I made the long trek to Some Crust Bakery for the egg slider I’ve been craving all semester). I have a long and rather repetitive history of ankle sprains (I say repetitive in part because the majority of them I don’t even remember happening – just noticing the pain a couple days later). The first time I injured my ankle while in college, I remember having a phone conversation with my sister: “If you want to dance,” she chastised me, “you need to take care of your injuries.” I groaned and complained, but I listened to her, and went to the health center to get it checked out. Even though I’ve gotten better at taking care of my injuries in college, the one time I feel stressed about dance classes is when I’m injured. If dance is what makes me happy, then not being able to dance tends to make me unhappy.

Nobody likes being injured. But being injured and having to sit out in dance class is very different from being injured and having it affect your livelihood. Dance is my minor because I love it, and I specifically would never want to pursue it as a career for this reason. I like having certain things that I do for fun, and not because it’s potentially helping determine my future. I like having things I can take a little less seriously and Scripps has given me a place where I can pursue dance, and just enjoy it.

Career Planning for Two

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By my junior year at Scripps, I was feeling the pressure to have a post-grad direction. As I buckled down to try to map out my life, or at least figure out how I would keep myself occupied the summer before senior year, I came to the realization that my plan-making and goal-setting was going to be severely hampered hindered curtailed influenced by my relationship.

Enjoying time together in Yellowstone National Park before senior year.

This was hard for me to come to terms with, as I’m sure it is for other fiercely independent women who have grown up in an environment with the message that no man is worth sacrificing your dreams. I have to admit that I felt some amount of guilt, as if I was letting my feminist foremothers down by considering my boyfriend in the life plans I was forming, particularly because my partner is of a certain Myers-Briggs typology that tends not to prioritize planning. If I am compromising from the very beginning, while he continues to fly by the seat of his pants, I can’t help but think that I will wind up sacrificing the most in the long run.

This brings us to the classic Scripps psychology survey question: What is more important to you—your relationship or your career? I have always maintained that I shouldn’t have to choose. Am I being naïve or an idealist?

My senior year, as I started applications for jobs and fellowships and my partner continued to pretend life after college wasn’t going to exist, I decided not to worry too much about the compromises I assumed I would have to make. My partner doesn’t yet know what kind of career path will make him happy, and so I cannot possibly compromise my own goals to get him there faster.

Together, we talked about our life plans, career goals, our dreams, and I realized I’m lucky. At the cusp of launching onto my career path, I have the love and support of a stable relationship, but without the inhibitive requirement that we must physically inhabit the same space. After graduation, I was headed to teach English in Bulgaria. He eventually came to the conclusion that he wanted to flex his language skills in Russia. And after that, who knows? We may come together in the same city for a while and then move apart again as one or both of us pursue grad school. I like the wild and open spaces of the American West, and he prefers the constant chaos of cities like Chicago or New York. Our difference in geographic preferences, which may have been a deal breaker in another age, are part of what allow us to follow our dreams independently, even as we continue our relationship and support each other from afar.

Long distance relationships are not easy, and they don’t come highly recommended. But by now, my partner and I are veterans. We are, in fact, quite good at long distance after much practice and frequent Skype calls. We are both skilled communicators and being apart forces us to be much more intentional with the time we do have to talk to each other. What, on the one hand, could be considered a challenge for the relationship is, on the other hand, a chance to balance relationship and career. For now, at least.

Whenever I am in need of inspiration in the combination of relationships and careers, I look to Scripps alumna Gabrielle Giffords ’93 and her husband, Captain Mark Kelly. While she followed her career to Capitol Hill, her husband followed his into space. Russia and Bulgaria don’t seem so far apart in comparison.

Photo source: gabriellegiffords.com

“What have I done?”

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought this in the last six months.

Is this the only path?

The first was when I learned I had been awarded the Fulbright. A moment that I expected would have been joyous, was actually a mix of relief (that the wait was over) and terror. At a time where most of my peers were still figuring out their post-grad plans, I now had the next year laid out in front me. On March 26, 2012, I was in the same, confused boat as everyone else, and at Scripps that boat is more like a luxurious cruise ship of confusion. By March 27, 2012, I was in a boat of my own. Sure, my dinghy-for-one had a heading, but I really missed the company.

It can be difficult to talk about job opportunities with friends senior year, particularly if they haven’t been offered anything, and even more so if you’ve been offered an opportunity for which they’ve been rejected. Still, I had thoughts and questions to wrestle with, starting with “what have I done?”

I don’t plan on being a teacher. I’m not even sure that I enjoy kids. Actually, I’m fairly certain I don’t enjoy most kids, but you can’t say that sort of thing without sounding heartless. Did I really want to be an English Teaching Assistant? Maybe I got caught up in the Scripps Fulbright frenzy. Maybe I just needed to “win” something to prove my worth. I’d experienced so many lonely moments in Denmark, did I really want to go abroad for a full year? And what about my long-term boyfriend, who I would be leaving behind? I re-read my Statement of Grant Purpose and Personal Statement, regained my confidence and accepted the offer, but these doubts and anxieties did not disappear.

Taking a Fulbright felt very much like walking into the woods without using the buddy system…

They resurged with a vengeance at the airport. I was a crying, snot-faced mess at the gate of my plane, and seriously considered not boarding and wiring Fulbright their money back. “What have I done?” In addition to the doubts about my professional capabilities and trajectory, I was overwhelmed with leaving my boyfriend. After four years of taking those Scripps psychology surveys that ask you context-less questions pitting careers and relationships against each other, I was living out that dilemma. And it hurt.

Now that I’m here, I’m still not sure what I’ve done. I don’t know how to teach. I don’t speak the language. I could be eating my favorite pumpkin bagel with pumpkin cheesecake cream cheese back in the beautifully autumnal Pacific Northwest right now. I could be furnishing an apartment that I plan to live in for more than nine months, or going to my friends’ engagement parties. I could be living somewhere with a Taco Bell right now, for goodness sake!

…but a walk in the woods has its rewards!

But I’m not. I’m on an adventure that requires me to take one step at a time. It’s one that I am ready for, whether I think so or not, and sometimes I need to take time out to remind myself of my strengths. I’m a “Strong Scripps Woman.” I’m good at mentoring, public speaking, recognizing and navigating cultural differences. I work well with a team. I have a good sense of direction.

And sometimes, I can write.