Back to work!

By Matthew Owens

Winter break is over and it is time to get back to school, kind of a bummer right. I hope everyone took advantage of this month long break since it will most likely be the last. After this summer we will graduate and for most of us I am sure we will be heading to work in an office somewhere. That means no more month long winter break, spring break, fall break, or summer break, unless of course you enter education as a professions. It is most likely we may never again have one month off work until we retire, if we retire. I know while I was working in an office the most time I ever took off was a week and a half, which was a long time and it only happened once, because of a surgery. Other than that I would usually take off a week for a vacation, and the odd day here or there for whatever reason. So this is it, what will be the last winter break for most of us.

So good bye to long breaks, they do not exist outside of education. Although it’s not to say that we didn’t have anything to do at all over break and we just relaxed the entire month. No I am sure some of us took advantage of not having class and got a jump start on this semester by continuing thesis work. Of course getting anything done is difficult with the holidays and spending time with family, and we all deserved some time off after last semester. Anyway I hope some of us grad were able to get some work done, I know I didn’t get as much accomplished as I would have liked, but it was break. I ended up doing some unexpected traveling which was excellent!

So back to school, back to the books, back to the crazy hours of an architecture grad student. I must say it is hard to get started after such a long break. We get out of the routine, we get out of sync, and we form new habits and patterns over such a long break. Even when I was working and coming back from a week long break it was slightly difficult. Having to get up to the sound of the alarm, getting back to the grind, and getting back to work. The one thing that I can say is different about time off in school to work is that once a semester is over it is over, but at work the projects keep moving forward even if you aren’t there. So at least we will not have to come back to an inbox full of emails or catch ourselves up to what we had missed during any vacation time. So maybe going back to school after a long break isn’t as difficult, but none the less it will be somewhat of a challenge to get going again.

Hope everyone had a good break. Now let’s get back to it.