University life will stress you out

It looks like this topic is God-sent because it will provide me an avenue to rant about how stressful my life has been these past couple of weeks. Some persons on hive have asked why I am not as active as I used to be and I always tell them that my academic workload barely gives me time to do other things but I don't go into specifics. So, now I will go into more detail about what has been stressing the hell out of me

Final year project

When I was in 200 level, the students in higher levels in my department always tell us that things in the university get more difficult the higher you go and I didn't pay much attention to what they said back then but now, I can say it's 100% true! I'm currently in my final year at the university and now working on the practical aspect of my project which is based on fish breeding (my department is aquaculture and fisheries management, under the faculty of agriculture).

The stress started last month when I began preparation for my project and that started with building a shed where I will keep the fish hatchlings. Cutting the bamboo needed to build the structure was no joke, my friend and I used over 3 days just to cut them down. Setting them up was another stressful endeavor and it took another 3 days to complete. Putting trampoline and banners over the bamboo structure took another 2 days to complete, then the real hell started.

That's me in the background tying banners to the bamboo roof

---

We went to a far place to get the male and female adult fish needed for the breeding and after a couple of days of getting supplies and tools for the breeding, we finally started last week. The day we induced the female with hormones to enable her to release eggs, I had to spend the night at school because it takes over 10 hours for the hormone to take effect. I slept for only 2 hours that day because I was preparing the bowls that is to be used in incubating the eggs.

The next day (in the morning), the female was ready to release eggs and after collecting the eggs, I have to share them into 4 parts because it's an experiment and I want to compare several factors after subjecting the eggs to different treatments. Only one set of the eggs wasn't treated with anything and that was to serve as the control. Everything was moving so fast and at one point I was confused because there were a lot to do and so little time.

One of the data I'm collecting is to know the total number of eggs in the female fish and theoretically, one of the fish should have up to 20000 eggs, and I used 2 females ☠️. There's actually a way to make the counting a bit easy but there was no time to do that at that point because I was focusing on the other set of eggs. I'm just lucky that my friends were around to help me out because I probably would have gone crazy because of how overwhelming the whole thing was.

This is a picture of the eggs (catfish). They are actually smaller than what you're seeing, the picture was taken at 2x

This is the actual size of the eggs. Now, imagine counting all these

---

The worst thing was that I couldn't even find the time to go eat breakfast that morning because it's a scientific experiment and I'm working with time, I have to make sure to do things as at when due. It was only when I saw a small window of opportunity when a bit of time was free for me to take a break that I quickly went to eat and that was around 3 pm; that was when I had my first meal for the day.

After the whole breeding, then it was time to incubate the eggs and I still had to spend the night in school that day, why? Because I will be monitoring different parameters all through the night, things like temperature, and making sure the water is always clean by doing flow-through (draining water from the bowls and adding fresh one at the same time). The process is automatic but I have to be there watching it because the water level can become too high or too low if I'm not there to always balance the inflow and outflow.

That night, I only slept for an hour and the worst thing was that I had classes the next day. I was in class and could barely keep my eyes open and later at night, I still slept in school because I still have to do the same thing I did the previous day but this time it was for the newly hatched fish fry. Do you know the funny thing? After the whole stress I went through, the experiment wasn't a total success. I still got my result from the whole thing but I still had to do another version of the experiment because the result isn't satisfactory.

Despite all these, I'm still attending classes, doing assignments, writing tests, and preparing for exams. At the same time, I still have to make out time to write articles on Hive. I'm still going to spend the night in school today because I'm starting the second aspect of my project tonight but at least I don't have classes tomorrow morning, so I can afford to sleep by then, right? Not really, I'm still going to be working on the experiment all through the morning and will probably catch my breath in the afternoon 😫.

How do I deal with it?

The one thing that has always helped me to deal with stress is mobile gaming but these days I hardly have the time to play games on my phone. I usually play mobile legends bang bang every day but since today, I haven't even opened the game at all. I played it for most of Sunday even though I was going to write a test today (I read at night 😁).

Right now I barely have time to play games but I still do when I get the chance to do so. For now, the major thing that works for me is the constant reminder that all these will be over in a couple of weeks; I can see the finish line and by the grace of God, I will graduate from the university. Now for the final question; will I be able to get rid of what's causing the stress? Get rid of my project? I wish 😆 for now it's a necessity for me to graduate, I just have to bear with it for a couple more weeks.

Thanks for reading

Connect with me on:
Twitter: @kushyzeena
Readcash: @kushyzee