Now that I’ve been here for two months, there is definitely a standard schedule developing. Each weekday morning I wake up at 7 (earliest on the floor), check my email, take a shower (as the earliest, I get to use the bathroom while it’s still clean), eat my cereal with yogurt (anyone who hasn’t discovered the joys of Greek yogurt is leading and incomplete life), and put together some sort of lunch (my current favorite is fresh bread with brie and onions). I load my backpack with whatever notebooks and other supplies are needed for that day’s classes and take a bus to school, invariably arriving at least an hour before my first class of the day (which is 10 am except on Wednesdays and Fridays). This way I can score a practice room for an hour and never have to worry about being late due to traffic or an unforeseen event in the dorm. After classes, I walk two blocks to the subway and spend the next four, often five hours at the practice center.
I’ve already joined the ’social circle’ there, which does have benefits when it comes to scheduling rooms with nicer pianos, though the only other undergraduate in the group is a senior and I’ve been mistake for a Masters’ student three times so far just this week. I’m not quite sure when and where the other undergraduates practice – sometimes I wonder if they even actually DO – but I’m finding I prefer to be around older students anyway as they generally tend to be a bit more focused.
After the practice center, I take a different bus and a second train back up to my dorm. One of the few things (other than sleep) that I still do for fun is cook, so I often spend up to an hour on that each evening. Of course it doesn’t always take that long, but there are only a few of us on the floor who get more ambitious than frozen pizza or macaroni and cheese, so at least I don’t often have to fight for the kitchen. My homework is still quite simple and never too challenging, but, as you know, I tend to be quite obsessive about such things so I use far more time than is really necessary for doing it. There is also a certain amount of wasted ’slop’ time caused by living in a dorm, so I never get to bed before midnight. If go back to school for recital in the evening, which happens not infrequently, I often will be up past one finishing things off. This is by choice though, as I easily could keep normal sleeping hours if I wasn’t pushing myself to do so much extra practice. I don’t especially miss Colorado (alright, I hardly even think about it at the moment), but I think this is mostly due to being always busy with something. I have no opportunity to sit in a room and rot, and I’m still actually enjoying the big city. I expect by the time I get to Christmas I’ll be ready for a break.