opportunity cost

I get to learn about ^ in econ later, whee.
Post content is related though.

During an opportunity, such as the International Summer School at Exeter, one should participate in as many activities as possible. I'm definitely missing out on the pub culture (the smallest grocery or convenience store will have a fridge section full of beers and ciders), but alcohol isn't my thing.

Sidenote aside, one shouldn't exhaust oneself, which would lead to missing out on further activities.
So there's this balance between staying well rested and being involved. (okay this balance always exists, but is particularly important during an overseas program)

Case study: myself.

Was probably mildly food poisoned yesterday (not that I was eating anything exotic, dunno what I ate that could be the cause), which resulted in missing the afternoon lecture. It was on biofuels and seemed interesting enough for me to not want to miss it.

Being sick is a convenient excuse to rest, so I slept away the afternoon and early evening. Having well rested from that made me realize how tired I felt the entire week, which led to my desire to skip the day today and continue resting. However, today's morning lecture sounded especially enticing (climate tipping points as an early warning system, the author was the lecturer), coupled with the fact that I was well enough to head to class, resulted in me going after all.

It was a good decision, learned something new from both morning and afternoon lectures (numeric modelling of saltwater intrusion. Genetic algorithms sound cool, wonder how they first devised that. Also confirms that engineering life is a series of partial differential equations). But missing out on resting tempted me to skip the day trip tomorrow to St. Ives (a friend isn't feeling well either, so she's also skipping which only adds to the temptation). Alas the weather will finally be sunny and I've been looking forward to St. Ives, so I decided to go anyways.
Hopefully I can write that it was a good decision as well. If anything I get to take pretty photos with vsco cam.

The lesson of this drawn out story to my future self, contrary to how things turned out, is that it shouldn't induce guilt/fear that you want to take a day off and rest.