One week down....

We had a meeting on Wednesday with all of the first year and second year Master's students. The director of the program mentioned that the second year students have 36 weeks until graduation. That means that I have 88 weeks until graduation. It seems like a long time right now, but seeing how quickly this first week has flown by has made me very anxious about the next 88 weeks... or is it 87 now? Oh my...

My classes are going quite well. I'm taking a microeconomics course, a social research course, a public administration course, and a one credit intro course. Right now, everything seems doable, but I'm also working on setting up my Master's committee and narrowing down my thesis topic on top of these classes. I spent my Saturday guzzling coffee and reading... for 7 hours.

Outside of school, I'm having a lot of fun getting to know my cohort. We all have such diverse backgrounds and very different undergraduate degrees. The program at Oregon State is outstanding. I feel so lucky to be here.

Yesterday, we had a potluck in the park. Afterwards, a bunch of us went out for a few drinks. It was nice getting to know each other outside of the stresses of school, however every conversation somehow ended up back at our theses. As stressed as I have been, it's been nice to know that we're all in this together.

I'm hoping to find a good balance between school work and a social life. My senior year at Pitt was extremely difficult. I spread myself entirely too thin and ended up completely burnt out by graduation. I know how necessary it is to balance everything, so I'm going to make myself take breaks and walk away from my desk every once in a while. But, for right now, I'm going to focus on my public administration paper that's due on Wednesday.