At least it wasn't 4:00am...

I was completely awake at 5:00 this morning. I managed to nap a little more, for that last hour after Chris left, but now I'm awake, and have been so for over an hour.

What woke me up was that my brain was still processing everything that I'm going to have to do this semester: I've never had a reading schedule this heavy, in addition to research papers. (Where do I find the time to research and write these papers?) My brain started to strategise. And then it started to come up with ideas about how I should approach my conference paper (for a conference at the end of the month), since we got a lot of feedback at the workshop I attended yesterday afternoon. My brain started writing the first few lines, trying to come up with something that would be really attention-grabbing, and then I knew I was awake. Like, no point in keeping the light off awake.

Here's everything I need to fit in today:

• a couple more loads of laundry before I leave for anything else;
• write out the opening for the conference paper, along with further plans of where I'm going from there (so that it's easy to pick up where I leave off);
• print off (or track down) all of the readings for tomorrow;
• go to the University bookstore and pray that my textbook (thick and dry book on the Canadian Constitution) is finally there, as promised;
• go to the department reading room, and photocopy all of next week's readings;
• get some cash out, and then put down a deposit in exchange for a key to the PhD office;
• go to the PhD office and get through a significant number of those readings;
• make some phone calls this evening.

Not too much, eh? At least I have a plan for handling all of the readings for the Canadian history class (it has the heaviest reading load, by far). One of the other PhD candidates and I have come up with a plan where we'll split the readings in half: we'll read one half in detail, skim the other half, and then meet every Thursday and compare notes. I hope this plan doesn't end up taking more time than it would to read everything in detail.