A (Mon)day in the Life: No Classes

This semester, I have the unique situation of having all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays…which means I have no classes on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. Whenever this comes up in a conversation, I always get some kind of joke or comment like, “Enjoy it while it lasts,” or “This doesn’t happen in the real world,” so I’m going to enjoy it while I can! 

My brother-in-law asked me the other day, “So, what do you do you on all those days of no class?” and I had to stop to think about it because I feel like my days with no classes are still pretty full, but in a good way. 

I try to give myself some structure, fill the days with productive things I enjoy, and plan out my days in advance at least a bit, just so I don’t waste those precious days “off”!

Since I haven’t done a day in the life post in a few months, I decided to do one of how I spend my those days. Here’s last Monday!

6:00  My first alarm goes off. I get out of bed when my second one goes off three minutes later. I’ve set two alarms a few minutes apart for forever and I like it so I don’t get sucked into the snooze game! It takes me a while to wake up fully once I get up, so I splash some water on my face, tidy up my room, and make up my bed while I continue to slowly wake up. I usually have some fruit before I work out, so I also have some strawberries.

6:30-7:20  Go run. I love running this early in the morning– it’s dark when I leave so I get to see the sunrise, the temperature’s perfect, the streets are empty so I don’t have to stop at any stop lights, and it’s the same time my sister runs! So we chat via our Bluetooth headphones while we run.

Time flies when we’re talking, so I do ~6 miles around a small town near campus. 

7:20-8:30  I stretch briefly, shower, get ready for the day, do my devotional, and make breakfast. Over the weekend, I made this banana blueberry baked oatmeal, plus some scrambled egg muffins, so I quickly just reheat them and top the eggs with avocado and salsa. Since I’m cutting it close on time as always, I end up wrapping up the baked oatmeal square to have in the car.

I felt like a total goof taking a mirror selfie before I left, but I love seeing the bloggers behind their blogs, so I figured you might all be the same way!8:30-9:00  I drive to my photography internship/mentorship in Cary, which is about 25-30 minutes from Chapel Hill. Luckily, I arrive right on time at 9:00.

9:00-12:00  I meet my co-intern and photographer, Casey, at a coffee shop. I’m not an every-day coffee drinker, but I like it, so I order an iced coffee with whole milk.

For the first half of the session, we go over the timeline for our upcoming wedding on Saturday. And then for the second half, Casey teaches some really helpful photography and business principles.

12:00-12:30  I drive back to campus and park near my dorm. 

12:30-12:45  I drop my stuff off at my room and realize I didn’t plan anything for lunch. I make a smoothie really quickly with ingredients I always have on hand (almond milk, frozen mixed berries, frozen bananas, collagen peptides, and vitamin C powder) and bring it with me to meet three girlfriends for lunch. I’ll sometimes buy food when I meet people for lunch, but I often bring my own lunch to save $$ since eating out all of the time adds up!12:45-1:45  Eat lunch with friends on the main part of campus

1:45-1:55  Walk back to my dorm. Even though I’ve been a student at UNC for over three years now, I still can’t get over how pretty the campus is.
2:00-3:15  Do work in the community office. I was an RA for the past two years but this year, my job involves helping manage the RAs and office assistants instead.

I have to hold eight hours of office hours each week, so I hold those on Monday and Wednesday afternoons since I don’t have class, plus Wednesday evenings. During my office hours, I typically process receipts and invoices, assign tasks to the office assistants, order new keys when they go missing, chat with the RAs and office assistants, meet with my boss, and other things like that.

3:15-4:15  I was scheduled to babysit for a family off-campus for a few hours this afternoon/night, but the family had a last-minute change of plans, so I end up being available to drive a friend to the airport instead. I snack on some super crisp green grapes, my favorite, while I drive. 4:15-5:30  Finish up my office hours for the day, then walk across the street in the rain to pick up a package at the package center

5:30-7:00  Monday nights are typically my least busy night of the week, so sometimes I’ll cook for a friend or grab dinner with someone, but since it’s still raining and it’s already been a pretty full day with a lot of driving and seeing people, I’m ready to stay in and relax for the night.

Cooking is pretty relaxing for me, so I decide to prep, cook, and photograph a recipe for dinner (and for a future blog post). I snack on some baby carrot and Trader Joe’s tomato basil hummus while I cook. For a little background, there’s about 2 square feet of total counter space in the dorm kitchen, so if I want to cook efficiently, I probably have to do it early in the morning when no one else is using the kitchen. When I have time, though, I try to just get to know the other girls on my hall while I’m cooking and allow for some extra time.

Like this night– there are two really sweet foreign exchange students on my hall who cook all of the time, so we often end up in the kitchen together, and we have fun talking about our different favorite recipes and cooking methods while trying to politely share the tiny space!

7:00-8:00  I take advantage of my free night to change into my PJs early, start typing up this blog post and have a couple squares of Theo’s sea salt dark chocolate for dessert. 

8:00-10:00  I got a lot of my work for Tuesday done over the weekend, but I need to finish up some assignments for my classes the next day

10:00-10:30 Get ready for bed and will myself to get in bed extra early so I can get up early and do it all again the next day!

Hope this was interesting/somewhat fun to read! Tuesdays and Thursdays are much more class and schoolwork-heavy, so I love having Mondays and Wednesdays to devote more time to blogging, photography, cooking, babysitting, working my on-campus job, etc. This is also one of my lightest semesters of college so far (hooray for being done with econ and statistics classes and LSAT studying!) so I’ve been trying to find a good, productive balance for my days.

In case you’re interested, here are some other day in the life posts I’ve done in the past:
Day in the Life: 9-5 Job
Day in the Life: LSAT Prep
Day in the Life: Beginning of Junior Year

So tell me…
When do you typically wake up and go to sleep?
It depends, but I think I feel my best when I go to sleep by 10 or 10:30 and wake up around 7 on school days.
What’s your favorite type of chocolate? Specifics are always welcome!
I love 72%-85% dark chocolate bars. Salted dark chocolate, dark chocolate with almonds, and coconut dark chocolate are some of my favorites.