Uganda Day 23: Back to Reality
After yesterday's post, it's difficult to find something worth writing about today. Reality hits hard, even in Uganda. Sipi Falls already seems like it was ages ago! I hope you enjoyed the blog post about it. I should mention that all of those photos were taken on my phone, not my camera. I'm actually so excited to get the real ones onto my computer and see how they all turned out. I probably took far too many photos, but it's hard to resist in a place like that. Walking around on top of that mountain at sunset, you start to feel a bit frantic, like you have to get in as many photos as possible, partly so you don't miss anything and partly because you want to capture it as best as you possibly can so that you can re-live it later. Hopefully this weekend I can get to those!
Right now, though, things are extremely busy. We have a whole bunch of deadlines at work, which is quite stressful. I also have an inordinate number of administrative things to do for this placement. For one, I have to record my day-to-day activities in a weekly report for the Osgoode side of things, although this report is the easiest and least time-consuming.
I also have to do a weekly "work plan" for the people at FHRI, which essentially amounts to a waste of my time. At the beginning of each week we have to plan out everything we're going to do each day, Monday through Friday, including deadlines, who's responsible, that kind of thing; then as the week progresses, we're supposed to record the results of each day. All of which is relatively reasonable—though still artificial—but there's more. When you submit it, you also have to include "comments" and "recommendations". Both are mandatory. So far, my recommendation each week has been to make the internet at least minimally functional. Speaking of which, you have to submit the previous week's completed work plan on Monday morning. Today, because the internet wasn't working for the first three hours of work, I didn't submit mine until closer to lunch, for which I received a passive-aggressive reply telling me to please get it in sooner. Hence the recommendation. And last week they replied saying it wasn't enough just to put the progress and results of each day's work—no, apparently I also have to write about "what I learned" each day. I'm in the research division...every day I learn slightly more about the same topic, as I'll continue to do every day for the next two months, The whole thing is so tedious and time-consuming, and the vast majority of it ends up being completely arbitrary and contrived.
Then on top of those, we have to write a mini-essay by the 15th of each month for the professor of the seminar we'll be taking in the Fall. Today is the 14th, and I haven't even looked at it yet. I was going to try and start it tonight, but I think I'll just try and crank it out tomorrow after work. Because the blog took so long yesterday, I didn't have time to watch Game of Thrones, as I usually do on Mondays. That means I have to watch it tonight—I've been avoiding spoilers like the plague. Priorities.
Anyway, none of it is enormous on its own, but it's a lot of little, tedious things that add up to a significant portion of my mental load on a daily basis. The one for FHRI especially tends to detract from the work I'm actually supposed to be doing here. Maybe I'll write about it for this week's recommendations.
Like I said, not a very exciting post after yesterday's. I am going to finish drinking my tea and settle in for some Game of Thrones. Good night!