Finding a balance between work and school is hard. Honestly, I’m only taking two courses at uni right now, but I think because they’re two biology courses with two labs, the workload is different than, say, if they were two humanities courses. This week, all of the assignments and tests and quizzes that I had postponed—with professorial approval of course—all caught up to me.
I had to attend a Biodiversity lab on Tuesday, then a Genetics tutorial and lab on Wednesday, and then on Friday I had a Biodiversity test. For assignments, I had Biodiversity quizzes due on Friday and Saturday, a Genetics problem set due on Thursday, and a Genetics prelab assignment and internship essay due on Friday. Add on top of all of that the 8 am to ~6 pm schedule of volunteering for the organization and…I’m lucky I made it out of that hell week.
I’m also really lucky that I have amazing friends and classmates who helped me catch up with all of the missed course material. I definitely would have been completely lost without them! All in all I survived and managed to get passing grades on my assignments and tests. And I just had to make it past this week because now I have a 3-week break from uni. So now I can focus on CVOC during the daytime and then catch up and maybe get ahead with uni assignments.
For CVOC, we’ve definitely been making moves. We managed to get a lot of office supplies donated to us, some pick-ups of donations arranged with volunteer drivers, and we did regular delivery of care packages. I think things are really starting to settle down as normalized procedures are getting put in place and being followed.
This weekend, I had an actual break from everything—from school, from volunteering—and had lunch at the Little High Eatery and went shopping with my flatmate in central Christchurch. I came to New Zealand way unprepared to how cold it could get, so I had to buy something to keep warm. While I managed to buy two nice sweaters from H&M, my roomie Lizzie bought a coat and a jumper. Hopefully that will be enough for the winter that we’re about to enter!
What I learned:
- There’s a great support network out there but you have to ask for help to be given to you.
- Time moves on; the assignment deadlines may pass and a tragedy may become a memory. Nonetheless you keep on working until you have something to show for it.
What I need to learn:
- How to tell temperature in Celsius. Fahrenheit just makes more sense though!
- Where do all the cool kids shop in Christchurch? I don’t think buying H&M is very Kiwi of me, haha.
