You look at the calendar and it says November. “Wow, how did time fly by so fast?” It’s almost the end of the semester, but not quite. You reflect on the past few weeks. It’s been crazy. Sometimes you catch a breather and think you’ll get through this. Sometimes you get thrown curveballs at the worst of times and you think, “I’m just not good enough for this”.
But you realise that this semester was full of firsts, and that means loads of lessons too. Learning to juggle commitments, learning to work with people of different working styles, personalities, work ethics. Learning to breathe, take a break and slow down once in a while. Learning how to squeeze productivity out of every waking hour. (I have kept a working approximation of time spent on CS3216 viz-a-viz other modules, and it’s pretty fascinating to look at the statistics at the end of the semester.)
This week, I am reminded that Parkinson’s Law is pretty relevant in our (college student) lives… How often is it that our productivity seems to rise when we are particularly busy? How much time do we spend idling or wasting on useless pursuits if we had the benefit of time to complete assignments? I’m not sure, but maybe being busy is one way (though not particularly the best, nor recommended, nor healthy) of maximising productivity? But perhaps the most important takeaway is that it’s good to take a break sometimes. Feeling recharged, we can better focus on what needs to be done.
While this week has not been kind, I am grateful to my friends and team mates for being awesome. Friends have helped me when I needed it, and needless to say, I am thankful for having such great team mates. Graphite has come pretty far! It’s been a huge project and there are still one or two missing pieces. Last week, I’ve been working on the front end, which has been annoying at times, but I also got to work on the icon and am pretty stoked about that gif too, heh.
It’s not always going to be a smooth journey, but let’s always appreciate what we have and look forward to even better days ahead.
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations