A time change is something that can actually be so personal…

I claim many identifiers. I’m the Science Editor for this here website, I’m a Barnard student, I’m the last genuine Voodoo Donuts stan. But the one that’s been causing me the most agony lately is my unfortunate designation as “person living on the west coast.”

As far as time changes go, three hours behind EST isn’t that bad. International students probably want to scream at me right now and they’re absolutely right to do so. But any time change is going to mess with your sense of time. I’ve completely lost track of the number of meetings I’ve missed or full-on slept through because my dumb brain can’t realize that 11 am is now 8 am for me. Luckily, I’m not alone in this struggle, and there are a few ways to deal with it.

  • Personally, I use google calendar religiously and when I get an email/event I automatically convert the time and put it in Google calendar which I’ve set to PST.
  • I also have an alarm for 6:30 every morning minus weekends both for class and also it’s almost impossible to miss anything if you’re up at the equivalent of 9:30 am EST and if you do it’s not your fault anymore because before 8 your time is unreasonable for people to expect you to show up anyway
  • Or perhaps you could set all your clocks three hours ahead? Idk that feels super weird tho (Editor’s note: that is some commitment if you do this)
  • I set alarms five minutes before all my classes and meetings to make sure I don’t forget them
  • Gcal with alerts about class that go off ten minutes before they start!
  • I printed my schedule and wrote, in large letters, THIS SCHEDULE IS IN BRAZILIAN TIME
  • I use a planner and Every Time I write anything down I make sure to add “X am/pm in BRT”
  • I also handwrote 2 schedules, one in PDT and the other in EDT to get the class times into my brain
  • You can add another time zone to Gcal, which is great and you can cross-reference times :) it shows up as just another list of times on the side
  • West coasters, just start your day at five with a morning run. ez

Good luck to all my temporally challenged folks out there. We’re all in this somewhat together.

Time to cry via Wikimedia