And so it starts.

Today is Saturday, the 15th of the 9th, 2024. Tomorrow is Monday, the 16th of the 9th, 2024.

Tomorrow is a day I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time now. It’s the day I begin my studies at the ETH. I’ve already met quite a few nice people at the PSE, and a few more over text. I’m excited to meet the latter group in person.

I haven’t done all-too-extensive preparation. I’ve been on holiday in Greece until yesterday, so I’m well-rested for a good start. By all means, I intend to hit the ground running. I’m going to create a time plan that is precise down to quarter-hours. No doubt, I’ll have to move stuff around in order to hang out with people and so on, but it’ll be a good first Ansatz.

I’ve been told to do all the exercises until the topic makes intuitive sense. This sounds like good advice to my ears. I just need to have the motivation to pull through. However, as 3b1b said: Motivation comes from action, not the other way around. So if I just get myself in gear and carve out regular time to do the stuff, it’ll go well.

Recommended are 16 hours of lectures per week, plus 9 hours of exercises. This takes us to 25 hours of official practice. These are supposed to be matched 1:1 with self-study, taking us to 50 hours per week of intended studying time. This is without Astronomy, another 2 hours of lectures (taking us to 52 total, without any extra work for Astronomy). That’s a large workload.

But I don’t waste my energy on anticipating that. I’m going to enjoy tomorrow a lot.