One of the problems of going back to be a student is adjusting to the fact that your time is not your own. Working for yourself and being boss of a team of younger team means that what you do each day is largely set by yourself, as long as you are meeting deadlines, delivering the goods etc.
All of a sudden I was plunged back into a rigid weekly timetable of lectures, and readings that had to be done before the lectures. At first sight, three 2 hour lectures a week plus one tutorial, combined with a reading list for each of about 6 papers, only one or two needing to be read, doesn't seem too much hard work, does it? So why did the week disappear so quickly, with not much reading done? Surely I didn't have a problem with time management? I wasnt spending hours chatting either. It seems we all found the reading hard and slow, so didn't achieve much. Hopefully it will be better this term, or I will have learnt to read faster.
Of course when you are reading Marx and Foucault, then you realise that this is part of the state's disciplining you to fit you for intellectual wage labour, under capitalism, to fit you in with its defnition of normal, starting with school, the army, prisons and the clinic. Thank God I found a profession and a job where there are few rules and practically no bosses, and my eccentricity is generally admired, and helps me to get the job done.