Notes from the Trenches.

Way back in July, during my first week of school and residency week at Cornell, my team and I were discussing our schedules in an effort to determine the best time to plan our standing team phone calls. 

"I think it'd be helpful to plan to keep our off school weekends really 'off'," I said.  "It'll give us a bit of down time to rest and regroup in between each class weekend." 

My teammates nodded in agreement.  One spoke up: "Yeah, it'll be good to decompress and not think about the work for 48 hours."

Ha.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Four month later I find the fact that we actually had conversation like this; held in complete and utter sincerity absolutely hilarious. 

Really, like doubled over in hilarity, I can't stop laughing, funny.

Oh, sweet, innocent, naive, little grasshoppers. 

November has been utterly bananas.  Yesterday, I figured out I would only be in the Boston office a total of nine days this entire month.  Not because of vacations but because of back to back to back work trips.  Throw in my school weekends and the Thanksgiving holiday, and bam! it's like we're already in 2016.

Not that I am complaining of course.

Work may be exhausting (a conference in Vegas - Ugh. Vegas. - will do that to the best of us), school is crazy town busy, and I only barely remember what most of my friends actually look like, but I wouldn't have it any other way right now.  (Well, I'd skip the Vegas part if I could.)  In truth, I used to think I had pretty solid time management skills.  Then school started. And man. If you don't think I've found a way to squeeze the most out of virtually every minute in a day then you're still up in the la-la-land I was living in myself back in July.  The other night my friend gave me a ride home; I was pressed to make it back to my apartment in time to jump on a scheduled team call.

"Look, I got you here ten minutes early!" she exclaimed.

Without an ounce of sarcasm I replied: "Excellent. Now I have time to take my nail polish off before our call."

Down to the minute, I tell you.  Down to the minute.

It's hard to believe even as I type this but we actually only have one more class weekend left in the semester.  By mid-December, when our last paper is turned in, I will be 1/4 of the way through with my program.

How in the world did that happen?!

And would you believe I'm already nostalgic for the weeks we've already had together as classmates?  For the work we've conquered, for the good, the bad, the stressful, and the hilarious moments?

So no, I don't mind the busy.  I've never really minded the busy.

But oh, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.  There's a long holiday weekend on the horizon and I've got great and wonderful plans involving food and naps.

And also...Accounting homework.
But we won't focus on that part just yet.  We'll deal with that after the turkey and the napping - that's what good time managers would do, anyway.