After finishing my undergraduate degree, I decided I wanted to pursue a career in Publishing and due to divine intervention, ended up here. Hi, my name is Beca and I am going to walk you through what it is like living a day as a Publishing MA student at the University of Exeter.
I am not going to lie; my days are not all the same. I wish I could say I have a nicely set out schedule that I follow religiously and am super on top of things all the time, but it is simply not true. I do consider myself to be quite an organised person within my chaos so lately I have not been feeling too overwhelmed. I try and wake up around 9am, but more often than not it turns into 10am. I am quite fast in the mornings unless I have chores such as doing the dishes or putting clothes away (even when I have to do this, I tend to leave it for the evening). It takes me around half an hour to make my bed, wash my face and teeth, change clothes, make sure everything is in my bag (I tend to keep all my uni stuff in my bag and take it in and out as I need it, so it is always there) and I head out the door between 11am and 12pm.
As much as I try to be the type of person to have a packed lunch, I simply do not wake up early enough to do so which means I give Pret half of my money every month. I enjoy my meatball wrap while watching some YouTube and then I finally get my laptop out to do some work. I am big on to do lists so that is the first thing that I do as well as checking any meetings or classes for the day. Most of my lessons are around 1pm so I usually work for an hour and then head to class. Once the class is done, I find a free spot on campus and continue doing work. I pride myself in having found some of the nicest, cosiest study spaces on campus, so I am constantly changing study space to prevent myself from getting distracted or overwhelmed.
I try to work for at least three or four more hours and head home around 6 pm. Since it is getting close to winter and the days have become a lot shorter, I tend to walk in the rain when it is dark which is not ideal but a sacrifice I am willing to make. I arrive home at 6:30pm and allow myself to relax for an hour before I make myself dinner. I do not know how to cook so I will save you from hearing about the atrocities I have created in my lifetime. Once I have eaten my delicious (note the irony) meal while watching a show on Netflix, I will either continue to binge the show, read one of the many, many books on my bookshelf that I don’t know how I will take home at the end of my Masters, or mindlessly scroll through Tik Tok until I realise it is 2am and I should probably get some sleep.
Everyone’s schedule is different, and you should not compare it to anyone else’s. If it works for you, keep it up. If it doesn’t and you feel overwhelmed and unproductive, that is when you might want to try changing some things around. You don’t need to wake up at 6am to be productive and you don’t have to do eight hours of work every day either. Do what works for you and enjoy it.