The word routine always reminds me of the French-Canadian dish Poutine. I’ve read so much about it and watched so many incredible videos about its origins, that I’m really keen to experience eating vegetarian poutine one day. I love fries, so I’m fairly certain that I will enjoy the dish, but what I couldn’t relate to in all of this information is the kind of warmth the dish is said to exude and spread across your body. I’d really like that, especially on a cold day like today where my broken window is giving me particular troubles.
This past week was my first actual week back at University. It’s been good, I’ve mostly been running errands everyday after classes and trying to get stuff done so I can go back to living normally here, but it’s been particularly difficult to get back into a routine of some kind. I end up having random things to do and as much as I try to plan things around a geographical location I’m at at any given point of the day, something seems to pop up. Or I get distracted, mindlessly, on YouTube. I love that website a lot, but I am telling you, it is the worst rabbit hole in the world. I was watching interviews with the cast of The Office, and somehow found myself watching clips of how you could loop Alexa, Siri and Google Home in an infinite loop of asking each other to do tasks till their battery ran out. That is not particularly interesting, or of interest to me, nor is it entertaining. Yet here I am watching it. How we got here, I am not entirely sure. Yet here we are.
Naturally, therefore, I wanted to use my weekend to get things in order. My roommate’s gone for a trip to Gir Forest with his friends, which is pretty awesome for him, so I’ve got the entire room to myself for the weekend. I organized my stuff and ran room-wide errands on Saturday, and today, I’ve just been trying to figure out what I want to spend my time doing over the course of this semester, each day.
Somehow I’ve ended up with more things to do than hours I can find, which means a rearrangement of somethings to accommodate my new sleep schedule of 8 hours (which I have religiously followed every single day since I’ve been back). Tomorrow will actually be my first test. Although only time will tell if I’m able to adhere to any schedule of any kind at all, it’s interesting to think about how to slot in stuff into my day.
This last semester of University is beginning to become a fascinating concept to me. The last couple of months of high school, before I moved out of my house, I spent on preparing my mother for the fact that I’d be leaving soon. I took breaks from chores on occasion. A little bit of this was me being a sloth and wanting to get pampered for a couple of months longer before I had to do all my chores. It wasn’t all very bleak though, I overcompensated a fair amount by spending as much time with my mom as I could, and she did likewise, taking time off work to be at home when I was on my study holidays for two months. It was awesome. We watched loads of TV and movies together, hung out a lot, spoke about our various concerns, and genuinely, bonded to the extent that we became friends. It was that time in my life where I was certain that some of the best friends in my world were my parents – it really changed the dynamic between us. I spent a lot of time also mentally preparing for University. There was a lot of uncertainty about what my next steps were: where exactly I’d be studying, and such, and I hated that so much, I spent time reading and thinking about all the stuff University would bring.
This last semester feels a little bit like that. The uncertainty is real. I’m just a little less insecure about it because I’ve been through this entire rigmarole before so it’s a little less scary to me this time around. The world outside of this University is going to be super different – and I know I’ve been protected inside this campus and on this University space. I also know that the things I’ve seen and done here are things that I’ve thought about and have shaped everything about who I want to be when I leave here.
I really want to use this last semester to ensure I prepare myself for a life outside this campus. Where, I don’t really need to stay awake late to get things done, or there aren’t actually commitments to keep very often. Where often, the only company you will have is yourself – and you’re likely to have to make the most of it. I want to get back to pursuing things I did when I was in high school that I enjoyed: things that I claimed I had no time for at University. This is, like a friend quipped: the most unstructured time I have – and I honestly plan to make the most of it.
Unfortunately that involves some amount of structuring in itself.
Tejas Rao 