The quarterly review — Q3

This is probably a week late to update it. In fact, it’s been a week at Salesforce already! Q3 was a mess I don’t want to relive, health-wise and work-wise. It was very prescient of the how the quarter was going to be when my fatigue of the previous quarter lingered strongly in the first month of the quarter.

There were signs of the quarter being terrible right from the beginning. My plans of taking graph mining didn’t materialize. The work in the course I TA-ed was more — more like a mountain more — than I had anticipated. A very heavily unorganized course, meant putting more than 20 hours a week, almost every week for the TA course. My research took the brunt amidst all of this.

In retrospect, my first month of research was way better than the next 5 weeks. Those 5 weeks slipped away with a leg injury that required me to stop all physical activity to nil and undergo PT. It became so annoying when I picked up a muscle pull in between my ribs by doing nothing. I became a frequent visitor of the health center and the PT center, none of which I cherish. (except for the PT exercises though, more of this below) In a quarter with almost zero course-load, I felt a time crunch like none other. I felt inefficiency. I felt the tiredness. I felt ‘shitty’.

I haven’t worked the way I worked in the last week in a while. With the TA workload only increasing, I had to prioritize between showing some research output to my professor and TA tasks. I went AWOL for a while, coming online perhaps for a few minutes every day to apprise myself of what’s happening. That was the most happening week of my quarter, and also the week I found my research heading somewhere. It wasn’t enough with time finally running out.

Q3 was also the quarter where I actually worked till the end of the quarter, courtesy the TA work.The last week required us to conduct project phase 3 interviews, grade project phase 2 and 3, proctor a three-hour hard final paper, and grade 134 variations of the final exam. I took about 11 hours to grade 44 papers and despite that I felt I was doing a disservice. We did grade leniently; but the students weren’t happy. I guess, they never stop complaining! :-/

I actually liked the PT exercises. My iliotibial band syndrome made me understand how my knee works and target its flexibility. I loved the exercises. It definitely helps me as I begin a second round of gym and fitness after a long time. I never stretched so much before! Plus, I understand the muscle connection for each of those exercises.

The worst feeling was one of disconnect. I wasn’t taking any courses which meant I didn’t really have to go out of my house a lot. With terrible health, I cut back on socializing , which led to more disconnect. And when I did meet people, there was a fresh perspective; but more like everyone had moved somewhere else, while I stayed (aka disconnect) I couldn’t relate to course discussions, and not even the gossip.

In summary, my research was ‘satisfactory’ as per my professor, while I felt I could do a hundred times better. My TA work was hurried and could have been better. The crazy living through the previous two quarters took its toll on my health and I had to step back.

Two days of snoozing and then hurried packing (something I can’t do without pack-repack-pack cycle) meant rushing through things. I finally arrived in the beautiful city of San Francisco last Saturday. It’s already been crazy. The city reminds me a lot of Bangalore. (with both being Silicon Valleys). 12 weeks of crazy worklife again — my life’s being measured in quarters now. 3 quarters gone, many more to come!