Grad school – Chrys Buckley

Goodbye, 2025. Hello there, 2026. New year, new me. All that jazz.

It’s a wildly intense time in my life, and on Monday I go back to grad school for winter term. I’m gearing up for a doozy of a course load. And oh yeah, I also have a book coming out ten weeks from today. So there’s that, too.

Yesterday, I did a lot of my calendaring for the term, made a weekly template of when I’ll do work for which class, when I’ll fit in book promotion work, when I’ll work on ebooks and audiobooks for my manager roles at Ooligan Press, when I’ll shower, when I’ll check my email, when I’ll pee. Okay, that last one, and only that last one, was a joke. I’m scheduled to the hilt is the deal.

Every term for the last several, I’ve made a mega Master Plan google doc that lists every due date, every reading assignment, every discussion post due in Canvas, every project, every paper. Some of it’s very granular, like preparing for two weekly Ooligan meetings each week, teaching a department lesson at Ooligan every week, and recurring reflection assignments for classes. Others are big projects.

This document is in a grid, so that on the left are the weeks of the term, and across the top are the classes. It’s not a spreadsheet, but it’s close, with everything in checkable boxes to cross off when they’re completed. You can take the type A planner med student out of medical school, but you can’t take those organization instincts out of the former med student, I suppose.

While creating this Master Plan of Winter Term Domination, I had two thoughts swirling through my mind over and over.

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A red saucer chair surrounded by bookshelves

A little over a week ago, I finished my second (of three) year in my grad program in Book Publishing. As with so many things, it went by both quickly and slowly.

It was often a frenzy. Especially this past spring term. I can say definitively it was the most intense term I ever experienced. And yes, that includes med school. I’m sure I’ll get more into the details of the term before too long on here, but now, in the more immediate aftermath, just thinking about it makes me too tired to function.

Since the term ended, I’ve gone through some swings in energy. And I’m remembering and realizing that it’s almost always this same pattern. The terms and the workloads may change, but this after-pattern is pretty constant.

I wonder, does anyone else have this same pattern too?

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