For me, life is complicated. I will start by saying that I am very grateful to be here in Logan. It is a beautiful city, which nature wonderfully close by to keep me sane. Things to keep me sane are extremely important, because I have two children (a 4-year-old and a 21-month-old), a wife, and a house to drive me the other direction. I love my family, and they are a blessing in my life. They take a lot of time, but every minute is absolutely worth it. To give some idea of the amount of time spent on family I will try to itemize some of the duties. On average, as the husband, I am in charge of waking/dressing/doing hair roughly once a week, sometimes 3 to 4 times, sometimes none, but this takes about an hour. Our children attend a daycare while my wife and I are at aschool/work, so dropping them off also takes time, of which I only do on days that I get them ready to go, adding an additional 30 minutes. I have chosen to spend the better part of my evening with my family, specifically cooking dinner, have a meal together, cleaning up, watching some TV, playing a board game, reading stories, going for walks (when it's warm enough), and a myriad of other activities. Typically I spend between 3 to 4 hours every night, actively engaged in taking care of and interacting with family. On the weekends, everything is magnified, and the weekend is usually just a long evening, which is great. On the weekend, I typically only spend 3-5 hours on school/work, spending more hours as needed which thankfully is rarely. Add it all up, and I spend roughly 40 hours out of 168 a week dedicated to family, roughly 46 more are dedicated to sleeping (approx. 6.5 hours/night).
As a graduate student, working towards a Master's degree in Biochemistry, life is also busy. Everyone keeps telling me that life doesn't get any less busy once you graduate and land a real job, but I refuse to believe that until I experience it. I currently spend, on average, between 55 and 60 hours a week on a myriad of activities related to attaining my degree. Listing some they include but are definitely not limited to, working in the lab, attending class, completing homework, training undergraduates, teaching recitations or labs, preparing materials for research dissemination, and discussing current research articles (only a few of which directly relate to my work). Typically I am on campus from 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM (50hours/week), although there is some variation, both earlier and later as classwork/research work dictate.
Working in the lab usually takes most of my time, but the last few weeks have seen a little less of that. I try to put in a minimum of 40 hours actively doing something to progress my research along. Having two classes this semester, one with a lab even, has hindered my ability to work in blocks in the lab. I have found myself spending more than a few hours reading and writing for class that I haven't had to spend in the past. This is good I suppose, since it means I am actually actively learning, but my research progress has suffered because it it. I haven't had to teach this semester, but previous and future semesters have been filled with roughly 15 hours a week of work for lesson prep, delivery, and grading. I enjoy teaching, but again it is a detractor from bench work. I cannot imagine how slow research would have been if I wasn't able to skip teaching this semester, and am grateful for the reprieve. I usually spend 1-3 hours a night reading or completing homework (average maybe 15 hours/week).
Totaling it all up: Family 40, Sleep 46, Work/Class, 50, Homework, 15 = 151 Hours/168. Having forgotten the hour every day for personal hygiene, this leaves me with just 10 hours so work with. Some activities that use this time include personal fitness (both mental and physical), console gaming, reading, and a few hobbies. By now you might see my concern for life staying this busy. Lets just say, life is going to calm down, because I'm in charge of it, and I refuse to not increase my "free time" after graduation.
What would I do with my free time that I can't do now you ask? Well, admittedly, most of my new found free time would be reinvested into family, but it will include more things like camping, taking vacations, four wheeling, bike riding, and many other activities that we do not have sufficient blocks of time for now, nor funding for. So while life may still be full of activity and not couch potatoing (is that a word? it is now), I consider this to be "less busy" since I am spending the time how I see fit, not how school AND work force me to.
How crazy is your life? How does your time add up? What are you going to do to ensure you live your life the way you want to? How do YOU stay sane?
You seem to be able to keep a pretty good balance in life. It seems that I have been in and out of school too many times to count (hopefully a slight exaggeration). I have been employed in my field for over ten years. My experience is that there are just as many factors that influence how you spend your time after school as there are during school. There are people who, as graduate students, spend upwards of 80 or 90 hours per week with school. Often this does not seem to pay off. The same is true of work after school. Good luck.
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