HISMD: First Year Pharmacy Student & Pharmacy Intern (former Classroom Teacher and Stay-at-Home-Mom)

In-office with a long commute. Partner (in-office). 3 kids - 13yo & 7yo twins. Columbus, OH. 41.

Each Thursday, the “How I Structure My Day” series features women from different industries, with and without kids, with and without partners, with family living with/near them and not, wfh to 1+ hour commutes, etc. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do!

Before we get to the good stuff…

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In the words of one woman who went through the program:

“Now that I’ve gone through Kelly’s course, I feel much more calm and confident about my ability to get both major work projects and minor (but still important) work tasks done - on time! I feel much less stressed because I am no longer worried that I am dropping balls at work anymore. I’m learning to say no ahead of time, rather than at the last minute, because thanks to Kelly’s system, I now have a much more clear sense of my workload and equally important, of how my workload interacts with the rest of my life…

“I also think that the fact Kelly has a background in a career like law was one key reason why working with her was the right fit. […]there’s a healthy dose of realism to Kelly’s approach to time management…

“I highly recommend working with Kelly - I can say without a doubt that taking Kelly’s course is one of the best investments I’ve made in my career and life so far.”

– V.A., Ph.D. Candidate, Washington University in St. Louis

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Okay, on to the good stuff!

The Snapshot

• Profession: First Year Pharmacy Student & Pharmacy Intern (former classroom teacher and stay-at-home-mom)

• In-office with a long commute

• Partner: Yes (in-office)

• Children: Yes – 3 kids (13yo & 7yo twins)

• Columbus, OH

• 41

Typical Morning:

• During the week, my alarm goes off at 5am and I stumble down the stairs to start the coffee and get my Apple watch off the charger.

• I empty the dishwasher while the coffee brews. 3 days a week I do my very best to get a 20 minute strength workout done. If I don't get up and do it right away, it doesn't happen. The other two days a week my alarm still goes off at 5 and I usually use that time to get an extra 30 - 45 minutes of studying in before getting on with the rest of my day.

• I shower and get ready from 5:45-6:30. I learned from Kelly to give myself the amount of time it actually takes me to get ready in the morning, not the amount of time I want it to take, so I give myself the full 45 minutes.

• I wake my kids up for school at 6:30 with the goal of being out of the house with my younger two by 7am. It never happens and is always closer to 7:15/7:20 before we're in the car but I refuse to wake them up any earlier in the morning so instead I drive myself crazy trying to rush them through getting dressed, eating breakfast, brushing their teeth and hair, and getting in the car to go to before care at school.

• I start a load of laundry while they get dressed because my laundry "room" is in the hallway right outside of their rooms.

• My oldest sets her own alarm but I check to make sure she's up a moving by 6:45. She gets herself ready but I do make sure she has a good breakfast to eat and her lunch is made for the day. For this school year she's responsible to say goodbye to the dog (he's a little anxious) and head to the bus at 7:40 with strict orders to text me once she's on the bus every day. We are lucky to have an independent and responsible kid and a neighborhood of moms always willing to help but this change has been one of the more difficult things I wrestle with as I've shifted away from stay-at-home-mom life to being back in school full time.

• In the new year we've tried to get ourselves organized so that my husband can head to the office by 6:45 and be at his desk by 7am. He leaves early in the afternoons to manage a good chunk of the kid responsibilities after school and it was getting too difficult for him to try and manage those things and log back in from home so he tries to start the workday early. It's still a work in progress and our weeks are a good mix of him being gone early and him still being home in the morning to help get everyone moving and then logging in from home to finish work later in the day.

Morning "Make Life Easier" Hacks

• My kids pick out their clothes at bedtime every night so they can get themselves dressed in the morning.

• We run the dishwasher, make sure the coffee is ready to go, and make sure the kitchen is clean every night. I go to bed much earlier than my husband so he usually stays up and resets the kitchen and main living areas because he knows how much it minimizes my stress in the morning.

• On the weekends my kids decide what days they are packing lunch and what days they're buying so that my husband can pack lunches while I workout and get ready for the day. He also gets their breakfasts all set up and packs backpacks with lunches, water bottles, folders, and each kid has a separate part of the living room where we lay out everything they will need to get out the door so that we're not scrambling to find hats, gloves, shoes, and backpacks when it's time to leave.

Transition Into Work Mode

• I give myself an hour to get from home or school drop off to my classroom on campus every day. That gives me enough time to deal with traffic, take the bus to campus once I've parked my car, and get myself settled in my classroom before class starts at 8:30.

• I try to listen to a book or podcast while I drive. This has allowed me to continue "reading" books now that I don't have any time to actually sit down with a book anymore. Some days I'm too stressed or overwhelmed from the morning to focus on a book so I just listen music.

What My Work Day Looks Like

• No two days are the same but I'm a full time student with obligations on campus most days. One thing I decided when I went back to school was that I would treat it like a full time job so I try to be on campus from 8:30-4 as much as possible. Sometimes I'll head out earlier to try and beat the traffic and get some studying in at home before the school bus, and I'll leave early on a Friday afternoon if it means a couple of hours at home to just catch up on a show before the chaos of the weekend.

• My hours at school are a mix of classroom lecture, lab, and study time. I also have two pharmacy intern jobs, one at our hospital pharmacy, conveniently located just across the street from the College of Pharmacy and one at a local grocery store pharmacy I've worked at the past couple of years. I tend to work 1 late night a week from 4-9pm at the hospital and about every 5th weekend. My grocery store shifts are random and based on my exam schedule and when they need me. I probably work 16 hours a month on average there.

• I'm also required to do 80 hours of experiential learning in a local independent pharmacy that I'm assigned to for the year. I fit those hours in when I can.

• All that to say, I don't have a typical workday but I do try as much as I can to treat it like a formal job. I rely heavily on my shared family google calendar where I keep my class schedule, work schedule, kids' schedule, and anything else that needs to be remembered.

• I do still keep a paper calendar and planner that is just for school. This gives me a specific list of things I need to get done each day for each class so that I don't get behind.

Lunch/Snacks

• We have professional hour built in to our schedule from 11:30-12:30 every day. I use this time to eat lunch and hang out with my study group. Sometimes we're all sitting around the table with our headphones in working but usually we use the time to catch up and turn our brains off for a bit.

Breaks

• Not really. I take a break when I need it but it's nothing formal.

Leaving Work

• If I'm not working late I try to leave by 4 or 4:30 at the latest.

Transition Out of Work Mode

• The hour commute home looks a lot like the morning but I'm usually exhausted by this point and use the time to catch up with my mom on the phone. I also do this when driving home from the hospital late at night. She likes to know I got from the bus to my car safely and keeps me company on my drive until she knows I'm in my driveway.

After Work/Evening Hours

• Most nights of the week the hours from 5 - 8pm are dedicated to my kids and family. They're all old enough to be dropped off at their activities and picked up whenever they're over so that has given us more time to run some errands in between or use the time to come home and make dinner while they're out. When we don't have an activity my kids love to run around the neighborhood and play with friends, play video games, build forts all over the house, craft. We try to keep things really informal on the non-scheduled days to allow for some boredom and creativity.

• We help carpool for my older daughter's swim team (carpool once she was old enough/tall enough to not need a booster anymore was a game changer) a few nights a week.

• Our front living room has been turned into an office/library so I try to squeeze in some studying whenever I can while my kids read or do homework or work on a puzzle together.

• We eat dinner somewhere in here. Sometimes we're all home and eat together, sometimes we eat in shifts, but we do try to make sure that whoever is eating gets a chance to sit down together and enjoy the meal and conversation.

• At 7pm we start bed time for the younger two. They take turns showering every other night, and it conveniently lines up with their sports practice schedules. If both my husband and I are home we divide and conquer and whichever twin I'm with gets to read me a book then I read a chapter from the book we're reading together. We spend a few minutes talking about our day, telling jokes, laughing, saying our goodnights. I like to lay with them for a few minutes when I can and we try to have them all tucked in by 8pm.

• I go back to my desk at that point and try to wrap up whatever I can from my school to-do list. Sometimes that's watching lectures to prepare for the next day, writing a discussion post or finishing a homework assignment. Other times it's just studying to prepare for upcoming exams.

• I try really hard to go upstairs to brush my teeth and wash my face by 9:30 most nights and am in bed after that. I've fallen asleep to a TV show for as long as I can remember. In high school it was on a tiny TV in my room, now it's Netflix on my iPad but I'm usually asleep within about 10 mins and it shuts off after that episode.

Dinner Time/Meal Tips

• I don't go to the grocery store anymore. I order groceries on Friday afternoon to be delivered early Sunday morning. This forces me to get out of bed on Sundays and clean out my fridge and get things organized for the week.

• I create a loose meal plan for dinners and we have a standard list of breakfast and lunch options every week.

• Meals are really simple and we repeat things often because they're fast and we know everyone will eat them.

• I do try spend a little bit of time on Sundays to make a batch of muffins, chop up some veggies, and hard boil some eggs. If we make a big brunch on Sunday mornings we'll often double the pancake recipe to freeze them for the week. Nothing is very formal or planned we just try to add little things on to something we're already doing to make life easier down the road..

Evening Non-Negotiables

• As I mentioned above we always run the dishwasher, set up the coffee, and clean up the kitchen at night. Lots of other things are nice to do if we have the energy but if not, we just wait to do those in the morning.

Afternoon/Evening “Make Life Smoother” Tips

• My phone goes on the charger in my "office" as soon as I get home. I wear an apple watch so if there is a call or text I need to respond to I'll see it, otherwise I'm totally off my phone when I'm home.

• I try to be realistic with my expectations. On busy exam weeks I like to think I can study straight through the evening but the reality is, I can't. When I try to do it anyway I end up frustrated at the constant interruptions so I've learned to just plan on those hours to not be focused on school and if I really need to study I stay on campus until after my kids are in bed. I'm grateful to have a partner willing to make the short-term sacrifice here to make sure I can do this successfully. I try not to do this often because I hate not being home for bedtime but sometimes there's no other way to make it work.

Sharing the Load with a Partner

• I could not do this without a supportive, involved, present partner. He picks up all of my slack. He doesn't love to cook but has learned to make a few quick dinners so I don't have to worry about it. He stays up late to make sure the house gets reset. He folds and puts away laundry every night. He is fully capable of managing baths, and books, and bedtime all on his own - and he does the voices in the books much better than I do! We try to chat on the weekends about what the plan is on our especially busy weeknights and we follow a loose meal plan but otherwise we both just kind of do what needs to be done throughout the week.

Things You Do For Fun/You During the Week

• Most weekends I'm either at work or busy with whatever my kids have going on but those are both things that bring me a lot of joy. On the rare weekend day when we don't have to be anywhere I don't get out of my pajamas and love to read a book, watch movies, and just hang out.

• Even through the busyness of school, I have managed to go to my monthly book club with some other moms from school. One mom also hosts a potluck and game night every month where our kids run around creating chaos all night while we play board games or card games. I'm lucky to have friends who keep including me even when life is very full and I try hard to make room to maintain those relationships.

Exercise/Body Movement

• I try to get 20 mins of strength workouts in 3 mornings a week. Some weeks are better than others. I let stress during exam weeks steal my workout time and use it to study instead. I keep trying to remind myself that 20 minutes isn't going to make a significant difference in what I know for an exam and that it's more worth it to do the workout but it's hard sometimes.

Outsourcing

• When I started school I calculated how many hours I'd have to work to pay for someone to come clean the house every other week. It is, by far, the best money we spend. I did not want to spend my time at home with my kids worrying about when the toilet was last cleaned or thinking I need to mop the floor. In this season of my life, my time is worth more than any money I'd be saving by doing this myself.

Anything Else the Sharer Wants to Share

• Before deciding to be a pharmacist, I was a classroom teacher for 10 years. An out-of-state move and the birth of our twins meant I became a stay-at-home mom overnight. I did work from home some during those early years but Covid and the needs of my kids extended my time at home much longer than I ever anticipated. Some time in therapy helped me to realize that I am not the healthiest version of myself when I'm home all day and the idea of going back into the classroom made me feel very anxious. Instead I transitioned into a career path I intended on pursuing many years ago and I finally had the chance to slow down enough to realize that it was something I still really wanted to do.

• I've had to learn to be flexible and go with the flow. Inevitably someone is sick, or I sleep later than I planned, or a doctor's appointment happens right in the middle of my day and I just have to adjust course and go with it. My husband has taken over the role of default parent and does most of the primary shuttling of kids in the afternoons, manages birthday parties and playdates, doctors appointments, and all of the stuff that comes home in their school folders. He works from home if someone is home sick and drops off forgotten instruments and science projects in the middle of the school day. While I know that my days are very full, I could not do what I do successfully without the help and support of my husband and my kids. We're all on this adventure together!

That’s a wrap for this one!

Thank you so much to this woman for generously sharing. These publish every Thursday!

A reminder of the ground rules to ensure women continue wanting to share about their days and feel safe doing so.

• Encouraging comments always welcome!

• If you have questions or even hang-ups about what someone shared, you are welcome to ask a question for the sharer in the same kind, genuinely curious way you would if you were looking at that woman in her eyes. She might respond through me.

• If comments are judge-y or mean-spirited, I reserve the right to delete comments. I can handle being criticized about my own work here (and even still, to a degree – I’m also a person), but I go into full mama bear mode when people come after my people – including women who are being vulnerable and sharing in the first place.

• Thanks to the vast majority of people who are so kind!

New here? Welcome!

I’m Kelly Nolan, an attorney-turned-time management strategist and mom of two. After experiencing overwhelm as a young patent litigator in Boston, I figured out a time management system to help me show up in the ways that I wanted to at work and at home – without requiring my brain to somehow magically remember it all. I now teach other professional working women how to manage their personal, family, and career roles with less stress and more calm clarity using realistic time management strategies.

My system, the Bright Method, has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, and my work has been published in Forbes, Fast Company, Business Insider, and more. Learn more on my website, come learn bite-sized strategies with me on Instagram, or jump into my free 3-day program.

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