Grad Student Life: I got overwhelmed.

One thing that has happened to me with increasing regularity while in graduate school is that for certain chunks of time I've just had to buckle down and work hard and long hours for several weeks.  This results in serious slacking in other areas of life...(like cleaning, and cooking, and socializing, and exercising, and everything healthy.)  Or maybe this is just me and I haven't figured out how to balance life yet.

However, there have been a few things on my mind besides research:

• Coursera (www.coursera.org) is an incredible idea; it allows people to take classes (given by several respected universities) for free.  As someone who thinks educations is important, I've been curious about this new technology and they offered an Intro to Finance class so I enrolled.  I'm really enjoying the experience!
• I'm in charge of bringing in speakers for a seminar course this year.  While this is an incredible opportunity, it has also been time consuming to get started.
• I think I could defend by the end of 2013.  (There.  I said it.  Now I have to make it happen.)  This is earlier than I had planned/expected, but it would also give me the best chance to travel for several months before starting my next position (from what I've seen, hiring often happens along the academic year so I could be starting a real position in fall of 2014).
• I bought tickets to see family over the winter holidays.  I will not be buying anymore tickets to travel anywhere for the foreseeable future.  Hopefully that means I can actually save some more money.