February 20, 2023
A day in my life as a master student
Hi everyone,
If you use Instagram, most of you have probably seen some rendition of this trend where people who work in all sorts of professions make a short video giving an insight into their day-to-day life. I don’t know about you, but no matter what the person works as, I’m always so fascinated to watch them.
Since it will be some time before I work on the LiU Instagram account again, and some of you might prefer this written format more overall, I thought it might be fun to show you a typical day in my life as an ecology master’s student at LiU in the last semester. Of course, not every day and every week will look the same, but for now, my days follow a pretty similar pattern, and if you’re also interested in this degree programme, maybe this will give you a good idea of what this time in your final semester might be like!
8:00 am: Let’s start here, since I’m mainly working for myself at the moment, I also have the freedom to organise my day the way I want. That means I allow myself a (debatable) later get-up time :D. Once up, I will get ready for the day, have breakfast and prepare and iced coffee or matcha to start off my study time. Around nine o’clock I sit down at my desk, look at my weekly calendar and start my tasks. In case you don’t know it yet: The entire second year of my Master’s degree is reserved for my thesis. For this, I already started collecting data on Gotland all summer, continued with the data analysis in September and have now started writing and compiling all the results.
Lately, I’ve been working mostly in my room in the mornings and try to work from 9am to 12pm. This is really nice because it gives me a lot of flexibility in the mornings to organise my day and cook lunch at home instead of pre-cooking every day the night before, like it was the case when I had courses in my first year. It is also very calm in the mornings at home, which I really enjoy. And, as mentioned earlier, it gives me room to sleep a little longer.
At the moment I’m starting to look for sources and papers that correlate with my own results, which I feel like takes a lot of time and goes super slowly… but thankfully I am not yet super stressed so it’s okay.
12:00 pm: At this time I prepare my lunch and take a break from work. Then I pack my backpack and make my way to the university, either by bike or sometimes, to get some more steps in, on foot. By bike, the university is only about 10 minutes away, which is very convenient and saves a lot of time. At the university, I usually meet up with some of my fellow students who are also working independently on their thesis. It’s nice to meet up for a few hours a day, discuss the work with others and feel more motivated to get the work done. It can get quite lonely working alone for a whole year, and it’s also nice to get insights from other people. I also think it’s good to get out of the house for a few hours to study, and it’s healthy to have different places to study so you don’t spend all your time in your room.
16:30 pm: Around this time, after my head usually starts to feel like mush and I have consumed even more caffeine, I go to the gym on campus with two friends. I only started doing this last year and it was a good decision. In a way, it’s a social thing for me because I go with two of my friends, which gives us time to talk and do something good for our health at the same time! Going to the gym has really helped with my back pain from sitting in front of the computer all day, and has become a welcome new part of my routine. I also really like that it’s a change from studying. I like going to the gym on campus because it takes my mind off work, and when I’m back home I don’t usually think about my thesis, which I think is very healthy for a better work-life balance.
18:00: Usually I’m back home by six, take a shower and have dinner. Then I often meet some friends again. We like to either watch some movies together, make dinner, or go to the Ville Valla student pub to chat and play some games! This is probably the part of my day that varies the most, since there are weeks where I have evening plans daily, but then also weeks where I like to chill at home, watch a series or read and rest. So this really just depends.
23:30: The time where I try to go to sleep, so I can be fully rested for the next day, and start it all over again!
What do your days look like? I think mine will change more again soon, when I have courses starting up again parallel to my thesis work, so maybe I can do an updated version for a day in my life again.. but anyways, I hope you enjoyed this short insight 🙂 Hope you are doing well, talk to you soon //M.
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Thank you
Thank you for your help.
Of course! Glad you enjoyed this!