Student Post: A Day in the Life

You’ve checked out the Harris website. You’ve explored the research and impact of our faculty, the coursework, the student organizations, the career development opportunities, and the many exciting events on campus. But still, you wonder: what is the day to day life of a Harris student really like?

Thankfully we’ve asked several Harristas about their daily routines, so look forward to seeing more “Day in the Life” posts from our students. We start with Nora McConnell Johnson, MPP Class of 2021.

6:15 a.m. – Wake up. Have a cup of coffee. Take my dog Lucia on a quick walk around the block in my neighborhood. I live in East Hyde Park, which is a nice mix of families and UChicago grad students.

7 a.m. – Work on readings and assignments for classes for the week. I work best in the morning, so I like to knock out as many tasks as I can before I head to Keller.

8:45 a.m. – Catch the bus to campus and find my friends in the Forum to say hi before class. I actually made the majority of my friends while we were enrolled in Jumpstart the summer before school began. Most of us also played intramural kickball: our team was called Kick Cheney ;)

9:30 a.m. – My first class of the day is a TA session, which allows us to see the application of concepts from lecture and practice the trickier parts of what we’re learning.

11 a.m. – Statistics II is my favorite class in the core. I was a sociology major in undergrad, so Statistics is a deep dive into the math behind the concepts I learned back in those simpler days. Right now we’re learning the nuance of multivariate regressions and how to write corresponding code in R. I love learning coding—there’s nothing more satisfying than running a line of code and seeing an output that you were hoping for!

12:30 p.m. – My lunch hour is usually spent at a meeting or a lecture. Recently the Center for Municipal Finance hosted a three-part series on public education funding reform (of interest to me as a former teacher) that made me totally rethink my summer internship prospects. Other days, I have board meetings for Harris Community Action or the Harris Student Government Social Committee. I love being part of Social Committee because I get to help create experiences for my classmates to come together and build community outside of our courses. For example, we are currently planning our end-of-year gala, which will be at the Art Institute!  Most recently I helped put on the annual production of “Follies,” our winter comedy show, and this spring I’ll help produce the “Harries,” our student-focused awards ceremony.

2 p.m. – Microeconomics is my last class of the day. I love that our professor plays student-selected music while we wait for class to begin. We’ve been learning about how firms behave and maximize profits for the last few weeks.

3:30 p.m. – My afternoon looks different every day. Some days I put my headphones in and get some work done; sometimes I zip across campus for a seminar at the Institute of Politics (I most recently caught many of John Bouman’s series on the role of advocacy). I also work as a graduate assistant at the Admissions office, so a few days a week, I work calling prospective students and writing blogs like these. :)

5:30 p.m. – To keep a good work/life balance, I try to clock out for the day around 5:30 (though I definitely have had some late nights working on problem sets this quarter). It’s easy to pack your schedule at UChicago—I recently went to hear Paul Krugman speak about “Demystifying Economics” and Mikki Kendall talk about her book, Hood Feminism.

7 p.m. – Lucia gets a longer walk at night (as long as it’s not terribly cold) and I decide whether to take it easy and stay in or go meet up with friends for a drink or bar trivia. Bar trivia usually wins.

10:30 p.m. – My days as a middle school teacher drilled an early bedtime into me. I’ll read a chapter from my recent obsession, Trick Mirror, and drift off to sleep dreaming of supply and demand curves. 

Read more recent student posts:

How a Team of First Years Won Harris<Hack> by Tianming (Timmy) Yang, MPP Class of 2021

Working for Chicago Policy Review, by Joshua Kruska, MSESP Class of 2020