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Back to Reality

By maxikaplan

This week is hitting like a ton of bricks.  Unfortunately, there is no thanksgiving break in London (surprise), which means that on top of my family coming to visit I have a regular week of reading and schoolwork.  As an added bonus, I will also be traveling to the good ol’ US of A in a week and a half for an interview that I have in New York.  If there were ever a question of how well I can prioritize my time, this week will certainly answer that for me.  Nonetheless, I am very excited for the coming weeks.

My brother, who is studying for his PhD in Vienna, Austria, will be coming to stay with me this week, and my aunt and uncle are arriving a day afterwards to spend the weekend with us.  Although my parents weren’t able to make it for thanksgiving this year, I really could not have asked for a better group of people to spend my time with.  And since they all are arriving the day after thanksgiving, a friend of mine from GW is taking me to thanksgiving dinner with her family—definitely something to be thankful for.  Ten years from now, when I think about all my thanksgiving dinners that I’ve been to over the years, I suspect this year will rank quite highly on my list.

In light of all of this, my stress level is not down, but up, mostly due to me wondering how my time with my family and friends will be balanced between my schoolwork and interview preparation.  I’ve come to realize that the more I stress myself out about these things, the less I get done and the more things I get done incorrectly.  I know that it may sound counterintuitive, but taking the time off to look at your work and your daily routine objectively, is, for me at least, one of the best ways to actually get work done, especially while studying abroad.  The more time I spend with my friends talking about things other than school, the better I focus.  And the more time I spend thinking about things other than my interview, the harder I study for it after I finish relaxing.  Since I’ve come to London I’ve learned that not letting stress overwhelm you is critical to succeeding in anything.  I wrote a previous post titled ‘Stepping Up to the Plate’, and that one reinforces this theme quite well.

With all of that being said, it’s not a question of whether or not I will make it through the next few weeks; it is really only a question of how.  Everything else is, as they say, rubbish.  I would expect an interesting post for next week, and I look forward to writing that one.  Happy Turkey Day ya’ll.