Have you ever wondered what it might be like living a life like mine? An international rocket science student, living in France, working on complex projects, and trying to balance everything they need to get done in a day. Well wonder no more!

I’m Cassiopeia, and today I’ll be taking you with me on a day in the life and showing just what I get up to and giving you the inside scoop on my impossible life. A quick warning that this post is around 5,000 words, and on average I did something completely new every 45 minutes for 18 hours! It took me around 20 minutes to read it all myself. So, get yourself some popcorn, get nice and comfy, and let’s get started!

05:00 – Waking up

Whether it was my early night, a burst of determination, or just plain luck, I managed to wake myself up perfectly at 5am today. Only one alarm needed to rise me from my slumber, but despite this I usually decide to spend the first hour or so properly waking myself up. At this time of day there’s no need to rush, I can just take things slow and give myself all the time I need to come back to life.

The world is pretty nice and peaceful at this time, the sky is still dark even with it being the middle of summer. Only the occasional car goes past and even the birds are asleep. Gradually as the hour passes me by, the sky starts to brighten and my eyes start to unblur. Before long the hour is over, and it’s time to get going.

06:00 – Personal Projects

Today, I’m starting my day by writing out a new travel article for a recent adventure. I loved how I wrote my post for the Pic du Midi and definititely want to do my latest one in a similar style.

This post will be all about the French city of Carcassonne, where I visited on Bastille day. It was a really interesting day out so I’m hoping to do it justice in my writing.

Whilst I work, I eat my breakfast. First a pain au chocolat (or chocolatine as they say here in Toulouse) and then a bowl of cereal. I wait for it to get properly bright before I have my cereal though as I don’t like going into my kitchen at night, there are many MANY moths in there at night.

As I work, the sky continues to get brighter and brighter, and soon enough the day has properly begun!

07:30 – Getting the Blood Pumping

Saving my draft and setting my laptop to charge, I grab my running gear and get myself ready for a quick morning run. With my living so close to the Canal du Midi, it makes for the perfect spot for 5ks in the cool morning air, which is about the only time of day I feel I can do running given the continous heat of the French summer.

I’m not the only one who takes up on the opportunity for a morning activity, I feel I constantly pass other runners, walkers and cyclists out on the towpath and happily find that some of them are friendly enough to wish me a good morning.

The only downside to running by the canal in July, is the insects. With me moving at speed, I’m essentially just hitting more bugs per second (somehow avoiding my eyes and mouth), and don’t think for a second that my movement will deter the Mosquitos from trying to take a bite. Those little guys are determined!

Soon enough, I was back at the campus and working on my cool down. Below I’ve posted my route in case you’re in the area and fancy following in my footsteps. The altitude change looks bad in the corner but honestly it’s completely unnoticeable when you’re running it!

08:30 – Cooling down and Suiting up

I’ve found that an important part of the cool down method after any strenious activity is not sitting down. I’m no expert in human biology but once you’re down it feels near impossible to get back up again, and it causes nightmares for your circulation. I always put a small walk after my end point of the run (here it’s the walk from the canal to my room) and then clean my room a bit until I feel my heartrate has gone back down and I’m feeling a little less hot.

A quick rinse in the shower (nice and cold of course) and I’m ready to get started on the work day ahead. I get everything packed up in my bag, and put on my best outfit. Which of course means it’s time for the…

Fit Check!

I take great pride in my appearance, especially on days when I’ll be doing lots and seeing many people. That being said I’ve often been described by friends, quite fondly I hope, as a wacko! I think it’s important to dress in a way that you find fun, and nothing is more fun to me that coming up with fun names for every piece. So, we got…

With my boots laced and my hair brushed, it’s time to head to work.

09:00 – Tasking Tasks

It takes me around 10 minutes to get from my bedroom, to the room where we work. Just enough time to get a few more pages through my audiobook and my head into the working mood. Today I was the third person to arrive, so I always try to compliment everyone in the room and lift people’s spirits! Passing around a few “J’aime ton”s and “Mi piace”s really helps to brighten their day.

Laptop: out. Water: drank. I’m ready to start working. I have about an hour now to finish up some work from yesterday. Lately I’ve been in charge of creating the requirements for our mission and determining what objectives we want our design to achieve over its lifetime. This means lots of spreadsheets and paragraphs explaining my thinking, but it also means I get to lay everything out just how I like and come up with a pretty colour code and the rest of my colleagues just have to accept it! Bwa ha ha

So that’ll be the remainder of my hour until 10am, typing and typing, with a little bit of typing to spice things up.

10:00 – Morning Meeting

At 10am once everyone has arrived and gotten prepared, we start the morning meeting. We do this nearly everyday so that everyone can catch up everyone else on what they’ve done lately and learn about whats going on elsewhere in the project. It’s a great way to make sure everyone is up to date on the work being done and keep everyone informed on any developments.

I used to be quite worried about these meetings, always feeling like I didn’t have that much to share, but lately I’ve been really working on being more proactive and making sure I’ve achieved something for each next meeting. It makes me feel incredibly useful when I can report everything and be met with smiles and thanks from the rest of my colleagues; there’s no greater feeling than feeling like you’re actively contributing to a project you’re interested in.

The meeting lasted for about an hour, there’s about a dozen of us and it takes around five minutes per person after all! Soon enough though I would be back to work on my spreadsheets, and my unlucky fingers would be back to typing.

11:00 – Stretching Legs

After our meetings are over, I always find it beneficial to go for a quick walk around the facility to clear my head. Sometimes I take my notebook with me and brainstorm a few new ideas for projects to work on, other times I put my headphones on and listen to a few songs to chill myself out, today I’m just going to wander unaided and see what I come across. It’s only a 15 minute walk at most but often it’s surprising what I see.

The campus is mostly made up of offices, so I do my best to stay quiet as I walk by as to not disturb the people walking. Occasionally I’ll hear an ongoing lecture or two and listen outside the door to hear what’s being taught, today there’s an interesting lecture on the effects of wind on rocket launches but as it’s being taught in French I could only understand about a third of what I heard. Walking on!

Eventually, I came across a large lecture hall completely deserted but with the doors wide open. I couldn’t help but walk on in to take a look around. It has been about four months since I’ve had anything like a proper lecture and honestly I’m starting to miss it. Project work is always interesting and keeps me busy, but theres something oddly romantic about sitting in a big, cascading chair room and taking notes from whatever random topic you happen to be learning about.

The wood feature lecture halls aren’t the only sight to see on my stroll however, the campus is dotted with green spaces that are ideal for people to take breaks in. So sure enough I spent a couple minutes outside in the summer air listening to the ‘soft’ chirp of the Cicadas. I’ll admit though, some of these places do give off a bit of a liminal space kind of vibe, what do you think?

11:15 – Back to it.

With my legs stretched and my mind ready, it was back to the work room and back to my spreadsheets. I’m making pretty good progress on everything, the main part is making sure everything is worded in the proper way and making sure all of the signifiers are labelled properly. For example, if I have a requirement saying that the satellite will need to survive the radiation found in an orbit around the Earth, here’s how I’d write that:

The Satellite shall survive in the GEO radiation environment up to a Total-Ionising Dose of TBD krads.

Theres a few important points. First I mention the satellites, it’s useful to mention exactly what thing you’re talking about at the beginning so there’s no confusion. Next there’s the classic ‘shall’, this means that the satellite will definitely have to do this; there are other words like ‘should’ and ‘could’ which can also be used here if there are certain things that might not be so definite.

After that there’s the GEO (Geostationary orbit) radiation environment, it’s always good to say exactly where something will be operating but usually you’ll define this earlier on also. Lastly, theres the quantifiable value, which I’ve currently got at TBD until I can do my research into a good level of survivability; this number needs to be given so that in the testing phase they can genuinely check to see if the satellite will survive up to it! So everything I write here is really important!

I’ve got to get back to it now, I’m hoping to get most of this done in the morning because I have other plans this afternoon that I hope you’re excited to follow me on 🙂

13:00 – Lunch Break

Once I felt I’d gotten a significant enough part of my work done, I packed up my stuff and headed back to my room. As it’s such a short walk I find it much easier to come back here everyday and make myself a lunch, today I’m having an edam and tomato wrap, nothing too fancy but substantial enough for me to feel fed for the day.

There is another reason for my coming back now though, and that’s because I won’t be going back to the workroom today. I booked it off on our calendar weeks ago because today something very interesting is happening in Toulouse that I don’t want to miss:

Le Tour de France!

13:20 – Walking

From where I live near the canal du midi, it’s about an hour and a half’s walk to the Garonne and, more specifically, the spot where the cyclists will pass in about three hours. I reckon that gives me just enough time to get there and find a good spot to relax for a bit before the cyclists come past.

I’ve actually never been to this part of the city before despite living so close. Usually I stay around the campus, go to the supermarket, or check out the centre. As of yet I’ve had no reason to go to the river this far south so it’s nice to finally get a chance to explore.

My walk took me through campuses, along busy streets, and up steep (oh so steep) steps. Now that I’ve reached what I thought to be my destination, I am exhausted. The day however, is still very young and I still have much more to explore.

14:15 – Pech David

Here at the top of the hill, I’ve come across a packed street, a check of my map shows that I’ve happened upon one of the checkpoints of todays route for the cyclists: Pech David!

Whilst this is very cool, and would be a great place to stay, I have about two hours to go until the bikes will pass me and it will definitely get more crowded here. Not wanting to stand around in the summer sun, instead I’m going to explore the area a bit more and see what there is to see!

Wandering around slightly (trying to keep out of the Sun mostly), I soon came across an incredible view. What I wasn’t aware of, is that the Pech David is pretty much the furthest West hill in Toulouse. What that means is that the view from here is nearly endless…

I spent a bit of time here, gazing over the land of France, something I’ve found myself doing a lot lately. It’s strange, generally I feel sort of indifferent living in France, it’s an interesting opportunity with many positives and many negatives; but whenever I get to a vantage spot like this, where I can just gaze over the world, it just makes me feel peaceful.

From there, I headed south through the Belvédere Pech-David (a place literally known for it’s nice view). It’s a long and hot walk, the sun’s bearing down on me now and I linger in spots of shadow. The Belvédere lies at the top of a cliff, and I want to get down to the river, so I have to walk south until I come to a road that goes downwards.

I found the road, and I’ve made my way to the river, now I’m simply going to follow the road further southwards until I find a nice spot to watch from.

15:00 – Villa Clapotis

Eventualy, I came across something interesting. A bar, completely isolated, by the side of the road. With this road being closed today I thought they would be closed too due to the lack of customers, but once I got to the gate I saw that I was free to enter. My curiosity got the better of me, and wandering inside I found that they were in fact open. So here I sit writing this from the bar with a lemonade! Ice cold drink, shady spot, and a giant TV showing me exactly where the tour is.

I still have about an hour and a half until they’ll get to me, so I’ll continue working on some personal projects from here until it’s time to head back to the road.

15:30 – The Caravan

Something I actually had no idea about until the staff of this bar informed me just now, is that there is what’s known as ‘the caravan’ about to pass by us. This caravan is made up of loads of cars and trucks of the advertisers that are joined with the Tour de France. As they drive past, they throw small objects and samples to the people in the crowds. Advertisement for them, free stuff for me!

So I of course have headed to the street, waiting with open arms for free stuff to start raining down on me.

I got sweets, crisps, a bucket hat, a hat of that red cow from the cheese company, and some delicious crispy tomato snacks. Whilst I love free stuff, something even better happened that I have to tell you about.

There’s about half a dozen other people at the bar I’m at, and when the caravan came we all headed out to the road together. After a few minutes of us trying to catch the things being thrown at us, one of the guys here pulls out a giant net! What followed became the funniest show I have ever seen, this man was more excited than anyone about all of the free stuff, yelling to every car that drove past us for free stuff. I was completely creased over laughing from this ridiculous scene that I kept getting hit in the face by the items being thrown at me.

I don’t think, for the rest of my days, I will ever forget the scene of a fully grown French man, running towards some cars advertising the Toulouse zoo, with a giant net, screaming “J’ADORE PANDA!”.

Hysterical!

16:00 – Some New Chums

Once the caravan had passed and we headed back inside, a few of the other patrons came to say hello (and apologising for their friend with the net). I took a break from my work and spent the next half hour getting to know them all. Many of them were actually the staff of the bar, they were here to get everything ready for the evening rush that they were expecting once the Tour had passed.

It was nice to have proper conversations with genuine French people, learning all about their jobs and their families and their lives here in France. Doing my best to understand their French and trying as hard as I could to give my responses in French also. Which, in case I haven’t mentioned, is impossibly difficult for me because I haven’t learnt French since I was 13, I’ve been living here all this time completely lost! Not here though, with my new friends I didn’t feel lost, it felt briefly like I was just another Frenchwoman. Like I belonged!

I also found out that the bar I’m in isn’t actually a bar. It’s a five-star restaurant that just happens to have a bar. I’m surprised they let me in I must look pretty disheveled. This restaurant is quite fancy, it has water features, and a lobster tank; a proper pasta cutter and even a pianist! There’s no one even in the restaurant and yet the pianist continued to play. Now that’s fancy!

16:30 – The Tour de France

Soon enough, someone pointed out that where the cyclists were on the big screen was only around five minutes from where we were. So once again we all headed up to the street to watch them all go flying past.

I found myself a nice shady spot on the street, set my phone on a wall to record and began my whooping and clapping to show my support.

For any readers who’ve never been to see a cycling road race there is quite a funny observation that most people have told me about, and which I knew for myself before coming out here. You can sit and stand around waiting for hours and then it will all be over in about 10 seconds. They are cycling incredibly fast and I am stood still at the side of the road, once I see them come around the corner it takes no time at all for them to get to my point and then go flying past.

That being said, it’s a lot of fun to watch. I get to clap really load, and yell “Allonsy!” Now, I can go back home and say that I was at the Tour de France, that I saw it! However brief this experience may be, it still happened, I was still witness!

17:00 – The Journey Home

Once all the excitement was over, I paid my tab, said goodbye to my new friends, and began the journey home. I decided against going back to Pech David as it was now the hottest part of the day and I didn’t fancy going all the way back up a hill. So I found another route that took me to lower altitudes and would get me home quickly.

I’ve been listening to a lot of French music lately to see if it helps with my learning of French. So I’ve popped some tunes on my headphones, and started putting one foot in front of the other.

I passed so many people on my walk that had clearly also come from the Tour de France. People looked exhausted, most likely from sitting in the sun all day. Others had some of the same merch that I’d collected myself (although I didn’t see many others with a cow hat), and I couldn’t help but feel even more solidarity with these people. I was indeed living as the French do.

By which I of course mean skiving off work and going to watch sports, c’est la vie!

18:00 – On with Projects

I arrived home nearly bang on the hour and, after resting for a moment to make sure I didn’t have heat stroke or anything, once again continued with my work. I want to get a few more of my requirements written before tomorrow as I always like having things to talk about in our meetings. Plus I’m having a strange amount of fun with it, I think it’s the spreadsheet, I think I enjoy having everything laid out so perfectly!

So here I sit once again typing away, there won’t be much more to report for the next hour apart from I am now eating all of my delicious snacks from the caravan. Bon appetit!

19:00 – A Brotherly Call

Just before the hour, my brother called me! I’ve been really making an effort lately to stay in touch more with my family members after I started to feel a little isolated a few weeks ago. It’s done absolute wonders for my mental health as now I feel like I’m properly sharing all of my experiences here with them all.

With some friends and family I know I can just call whenever and they will pick up, but with my older brother and sister and their busy schedules I get to be properly scheduled in. I always ask them to pencil me in for a Wednesday evening or something. I think I have too much fun with pretending to be a secretary honestly.

The hour passed with me catching up with my big bro, learning all about their recent activities back in the UK and filling them in on my viewing of the Tour de France. Once again though, I started to get hungry so we parted ways and I headed to the kitchen.

20:00 – Cooking with Cassie

It’s not every day that I have it in me to cook something proper. I am a classic student after all, usually I’m either too tired, or much too busy to cook something (thank you microwave pizza pockets!). Today though, especially as I’m logging everything I’m doing, I’ve decided to cook something proper although very simple!

It’s a current favourite of mine, mushroom and plantball pasta. Toulouse has an IKEA that my friends visited and picked me up some of the vegetarian meatballs that are sold there, so I cook them with some classic French champignon mushrooms and mix it in with some pasta. It’s no five star meal that’s for sure but it lets me create the enjoyment of cooking without completely exhausting myself with extravagance.

I sat in the balcony area to eat and watched the sun go behind some trees. When I woke up at 5am today it was still dark, then I had seen it rise into the morning, then high into the sky bearing down on me as I hiked, and now the Sun had begun to disappear again. Another day had passed and honestly I had so much to show for it!

21:00 – Once More unto the Projects

Once dinner was finished and everything had been washed up, I once again got my laptop back out and continued to work on some personal projects. Last night I sent out a bunch of emails to different researchers and employers to ask about work they had advertised and today I have about a dozen replies to get through.

Often when I see posts advertising vacancies or research opportunities I give them a proper read and come up with five or so questions about the role. What would the hours be like? What is the public transport in the area like? How open is the research to branching paths? And often a few more specific questions to do with the actual topic. Then I’ll drop whoever posted the advertisement an email asking if we can set up a call for a sort of informal chat where I can ask my questions. I’ve never had a time where they’ve said no, more often than not people are really excited to see someone taking such an interest in the role, and by talking to someone properly it’s a great way to get my foot in the door.

With my reply emails, I’ve set up a few calls over the next week or so, maybe one of them will be what I want to do once I finish my course come October. Only time will tell!

23:00 – Winding Down

Now that it’s dark, I close my blind on my window and flip on the lights of my room. Usually after 11pm I try not to go on any tech so that I can let my brain relax so I’m actually writing this the next morning. Luckily I remember everything I did so I can perfectly recount to you!

First I hopped into the shower to rinse the day off of me. Then I slipped on some pyjamas and just relaxed on my bed for a bit looking through my haul for the day. I do my nighttime routine to freshen myself up, and do a few stretches to make sure I don’t sleep too funny.

After that I usually sit on my bed and take a quick read through my notebook. Here I keep track of all of the different projects I’ve worked on and every idea that I have for future ones. Often I make very quick notes throughout the day so my task at this time is to try to decipher what on Earth I was talking about.

At about half past though, I’m feeling pretty tired, I have been awake for over 18 hours at this point! So I get myself into bed, flip off the lights, and quickly fall asleep. The day fades to the next.

The End

*

So there you have it. A day in the life of an international rocket science student. We had studies, we had sports, we had fitness, we had cooking. It was somehow one of the most exciting days just by chance! I hope you enjoyed reading, and I hope you found it all interesting. It’s been months since I’ve done a Day in the Life post and I always enjoy them (even if it means writing a very long post).

If you have any thoughts or want to learn more about what living a life like mine is like, drop a comment below. I always give them a read and love to interact with my readers.

For now though,

Bonne nuit,

Cassie