Of Packed Schedules and Sleep-Inducing Pills by Konnie Enos

 Going back to school to get my bachelor’s degree is proving to be something of a challenge.

Every other time I’ve enrolled in higher education, I took 12 credits, maybe 13, per semester. This semester I have 14 credits. This equates to 14 hours of classes per week. So, a part-time job.

Only it’s not 14 hours because you’ll have to compute the amount of time that you’ll need to get all the homework done. The general rule is 3 to 4 hours a week per credit, 14 times three is 42. Increase that to four and it’s 56 hours a week. Which means I’m spending seven to nine hours a day, six days a week on schoolwork.

Is it any wonder I’m having difficulty keeping up with my other responsibilities? Like writing my post regularly. Worse still, about half my weekly assignments are due on Wednesday. (Please note which day my post goes up.) Then the rest are due on Saturday.

Yes, I work ahead as much as possible, but I still end up with plenty due on both days.

What brought on all this introspection about the number of hours I’m putting in?

I realized that the minimum number of credits I had left to do to complete my degree is 15. Only that last credit is an internship, one in which I’ll have to have a job or internship of at least 15 hours a week. Fifteen plus 42 is 57 while 56 plus 15 is 71, 10-to-12-hour days, six days a week. I wonder how much I’d be able to get done then.

With that in mind, I investigated extending my college experience at least one more semester. Changing my last semester to the Summer semester sounded the easiest but there was one hitch. Of the six classes I have left, only one of them is offered over the Summer semester. Fortunately, that’s the internship.

Okay, so take another 14-credit semester then finish off with my internship over the short summer semester. I took the time to investigate what exactly I had to do to set up the internship class.

I’ll have to find at least a part-time job to use for my internship. So instead of putting it off until I graduate, I need to find a job now.

Fun.

Not.

So now I’m adding locating jobs and submitting applications to them into my already busy schedule.

What else could possibly make things more stressful for me?

Apparently, I already asked that.

How do I know?

Saturday night I noticed my left lower lid was sore to the touch and swelling. The last time I had issues with swelling in my eyelid it affected my vision. When it got so bad I couldn’t even read the street signs, I went for help. I cleared up the swelling, but not my vision. Turned out I needed cataract surgery. With it swelling again I thought of all the possible causes, pink eye being the first one on my mind.

I had Jerry take me to a Quick Care Monday morning, only to discover that yet one more medical provider in this whole valley has no clue how to deal with my primary insurance. For me, getting medical care is being more and more difficult because there aren’t many places around here that even know what ChampVA is, and they either don’t take it, or they stop taking it for whatever reason. The only quick cares around here I haven’t tried don’t take my secondary insurance.

My only other option for urgent care is the ER.

Fortunately, there is a stand-alone ER nearby that isn’t generally swamped.

A couple of hours later they’re offering me several medications for my first dose and prescriptions to take home and continue treatment. One of those medicines was to help decrease the swelling. A side effect of said medicine is sleep.

It’s Monday.

I have a bunch of reading to do to complete all my assignments due on Wednesday. Every time I attempted to read my textbook (boring enough in its own right) I zonked out. By the end of the day, I’d managed maybe half of the reading I needed to do.

The first thing to do was not plan on taking that medicine in the morning.

The second thing, let my teachers know I may have issues getting done with my homework this week.

Okay, now I’ve got things back under control.

Right up until about a half-hour after I took my medicine last night. You know about the time I started dozing off and realized I still had this post to write. So, if it’s disjointed or rambling, blame it on the pills.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.