I try and wake up around 8.00 to get a good start to the day. My morning routine kicks off with a few minutes of stretching to get my blood circulating while I wait for the coffee to finish brewing. Once it’s finished, I have a small breakfast, get dressed, and pack up my bag. I walk to campus, which usually takes me about 10 minutes. On the way, I internally decide which building to study in for the day; my recent favourite places alternate between the sixth floor of the Saw Swee Hock building and the study room in Kingsway.

Around 9.00, I finally get started. Multitasking between testing code and editing my dissertation, three and a half hours fly by quickly and before I know it, it’s lunch time. Most days I try to bring lunch that I’ve made for myself the night before, but sometimes I go out and grab something instead. Luckily, there’s a lot of options around and on LSE campus.

I take my lunch and study break until 13.00, checking my emails and catching up with my friend who usually comes along to study with me. I take this time to recharge my brain from staring at lines of code all morning. Sometimes my friend and I will discuss our weekend plans and try to find fun things to do around the city like special exhibits or new movies to go see. Fully recharged now, I get back to work and pick up where I left off. This means rechecking my code, continuing to format my dissertation, and reading academic papers (especially when I get stuck and need to see what someone else has done in their work). This is another three hours before my friend and I decide to refresh our brains again by focusing on some exercise. We head to the LSE Gym and transition our brains to focus on physical activity, taking our minds off of our dissertations. 

Around 17.00, I head home, walking through Lincoln’s Inn Fields to enjoy the summer weather. I cook dinner for myself and put my work aside for a bit, letting some code run in the background (the last batch took 3 days to run!). I might work on the dissertation a bit more during my evening, but I try my best to relax and do something just for fun whether it’s watching a movie or putting together a puzzle. The evening hours pass by even more quickly than they do when I’m working, so before bed I make sure to call my parents in the U.S. and then I get ready to sleep around midnight. If I’m lucky, I fall asleep somewhat quickly because I need my 8 hours of rest to do it all over again the next day.