THE WEEKEND OF A GRAD STUDENT

This weekend I did my best to balance my social life with my need to study. I also had to sneak in a couple of chores.

On Friday, I got up early and worked for about six hours on my lab project. Right now I'm cleaning up data I've collected from an online genetic database. The work is tedious and long (I have 139 pages of data collected). I then went for quick run, with a stop at the local bank to close my checking account. My run was fabulous (ending in running the steps at Malcolm X Park - pictured here - three times).

I then rushed home and got ready for a night out with the girls...

I met up with Andrea and Angie on Friday night and we went with three of the girls from our church youth group to a high school football game. It was a lot of fun and brought back a lot of memories (both good and bad) from high school. I got home around 11pm and went straight to bed.

Saturday morning David and I got up early. He did chores; I studied. Mid-morning we went out for a run (about 4 miles) that ended in a sprint up the hill from Rock Creek Park to Connecticut Ave. We returned home and I began studying again. Saturday night we had dinner with our friends, Ted and Martha. After dinner David went to a concert in the neighborhood. I stayed up until after 1am and studied.

Sunday we went to church. We came home and I studied. During my afternoon study break, I swept the floors and talked to my parents and Andrea on the phone - nice multitasking. I also made chocolate bundt cakes, which I made into ice-cream cakes (after they had cooled) by cutting off the top of the cake and sticking in a layer of ice-cream (as you'll read a little further down, today is Andrea's birthday).

After the break, I studied some more. David and I ate dinner together and then went for a nice walk through Columbia Heights. The highlight of the walk was that the Sunday night drummers at Malcolm X Park were still drumming when we walked into the park. It was the first time I heard the drummers this summer - they are wonderful. After we got home from our walk, I hit the books again.

This morning I completed the statistics exam I had been studying for around noon. I've decided that after a lot of studying this weekend I need some time off. I'm going to go to the gym, nap on the train ride home, and go out to celebrate Andrea's birthday this evening (I'm also going to have some homemade ice-cream cake!). When I return home, I'm going to spend no more than one hour finalizing a paper that is due tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning I'll get up and do it all over again. Only this time, I'll be studying for mid-terms in epidemiology and health survey research methods and preparing for a 20 minute oral presentation in infectious disease epidemiology.