As with most days, morning is my time for me. I’m up and riding my Schwinn Sierra out the door at 5:30am to go to the gym at Iron Republic in Sand City. The ride back home is one of my favorite parts of the day: the air is cool and refreshing after working out, I get to watch the sky change colors over the water as the sun rises, and the bike path is empty, even near the Wharf (score!). This is when I run any errands I need to, which today means stopping by the market to pick up coffee and apples. I then have enough time to go home to shower, breakfast, review any homework and maybe even watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, before walking to class at 10am.
Depending on the day, at 10am I’m going to either Non-State Armed Actors with Dr. Iyer or Human Security and Development with Don Eduardo, all standard parts of my program in IPS. Because, you know, I like to start my day off with the easy, light stuff. In all seriousness though, I love the classes I’m taking. Not to mention that working with the same people over and over again makes classes a lot more like shared efforts and experiences than the lecture halls I had to sit through in undergrad. After my classes end, I walk across campus to the seemingly always overheated Global Majority office in the 3rd floor of McGowan to meet with my fellow Conflict Mediation instructors. Over lunch (although it’s rare that I actually remember to pack food to bring) we plan for our Friday morning classes, when we’ll drive out to Salinas to teach conflict mediation to the high school students at Salinas Community High School and Rancho Cielo.
I spend the rest of my afternoon and into the evening planted at either Samson or a coffee shop to do my readings and homework, but I always have to break sometime around 7pm, whether it’s to pass through the farmer’s market, call/Skype a friend, or just cook a nice dinner. With my brain recharged, I can usually find the energy and willpower to do follow-up work for the Mindanao trip I did in J-term for the rest of the night. Usually. Other times I run over to a friend’s house, or I read: right now I’m in the middle of The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho. I like to end my day with a few minutes of yoga, just to stretch everything out and relax. A reliable indicator of whether I was able to accomplish much during the day is how fast I fall asleep: on a really productive day, I’m happily asleep pretty much as soon as my head hits the pillow, to re-energize for tomorrow.