Who's the busiest of us all?

It's the busy period of the semester. Exams are coming and assignment deadlines are due soon for the students. People are studying or working on last minute reports. I may not have any reports due until August but I do need to start working on it. I have a huge pile of papers waiting to be read.

The people at work seem busier too. There's less friendly chatter along the hallway; less people stopping by each other's room to gossip. Even when we are in the same room together, we are just too preoccupied with our own problems to bother about catching up with each other's lives. Supervisors are constantly in meetings, discussions, emailing or calling other people. Trying to find time to ask them a question or two is getting more difficult. Still, they are always happy to sit down for a few minutes to look at my progress and figure out how to more forward from here. I miss being able to just sit down and talk about something other than work, or even to tease someone. But everyone doesn't seem to be in the mood for that. They are also coming up earlier from lunch and leaving later after work. I've had my fair shares of that. Today I skipped lunch because I wanted to work on a software only available on my colleague's computer. So I decided to use the lunch break to work while she was eating. I forgot to bring my own lunch and when I went down to eat around 2.30 pm, I found out that the canteen lady was away so I drank lots of water and ate a muesli bar. Thank goodness I had Uncle Toby's!

Starting from this week, I'm going to be really busy. The experiment I have to conduct will take most of the day and I'm trying to figure out if I can optimize my time so that I can finish this earlier. It will mean planning my time precisely and having to forgo some things like sleep and internet time. I also have to work in some research time as I can't discard my report.

Guess I'll be having less fun and more stress in the weeks to come...