In April of last year, I returned
to college in the hopes of finally obtaining my bachelor's degree. That first
semester I took 13 credit hours, full-time. They say it’s full-time because you
should be putting in three to four hours of work for every credit. 13 times 3 is
39. I opted to not take any courses over the summer term because the summer
term is a full 5 weeks shorter, but you’re still expected to cover the same
material. I didn’t feel like attempting a three-credit class at this faster
pace.
In September I started my second
semester and again took 13 credits. I could handle doing that many credits. I probably
spent about twenty to twenty-five hours a week on schoolwork and never had any last-minute
rushes or panics about being able to complete everything.
In preparing for this semester,
I looked at the classes I was still required to take and found that I had only 29
credits left. I did look at possibly taking less than twelve credits per
semester to spread them out further, but I figured 14 wouldn’t be much
different than doing 13.
I was very wrong.
Not so much because it’s fourteen
credits, but because four of those classes were the weightier three-credit
ones. So now I’m spending most of my days, Monday through Saturday just trying
to get everything in before they are late. I’ve failed at least a couple of
times.
In consideration of how swamped
I’ve been this semester; I investigated my options for spreading my remaining classes
out further.
Option one was taking only one
class over the summer term. This class is an internship that requires me to
first obtain the job I’m doing the internship in. I do not have a job and my
prospects of finding an internship, especially one locally, are slim.
Option two was to postpone two
or three of my remaining classes until the fall semester. I could not take them
over the summer semester because exactly zero of them are offered over the
summer.
Okay then.
I’d been looking forward to
finishing my degree, and “walking” at the same time as my daughter, who will be
getting her associate degree at the end of the spring semester. That and I did
not want to take just three to six credits or wait until Christmas time to get
my degree.
So, that leaves option three.
Take fifteen credits hours, a
total of six classes, with four of those being again three-credit classes. Oh,
and the one-credit class requires at least 10 hours of work a week. So there
goes any free time I thought I had between Easter and Pioneer Day (that’s July
24th).
If I hole up in my bedroom and
ignore any responsibility that can’t be dealt with on Sunday, then I just might
manage.
Oh, wait.
My posts.
I have seven posts due between
the first day of the semester and the last day. Although, I do have the week before
Easter off, so I can probably get that written before the semester starts.
The other holidays in that time
frame are Flag Day and The Fourth. My youngest also has a birthday in there and
he provides plenty of topics for a post.
I still need three topics and I’m
probably going to have to spend my week break between classes pre-writing most
of those, so it doesn’t end up falling on Bonnie to pick up my slack.
I'm sure she’d appreciate the effort
but I was so looking forward to having a bit of breathing room so I could read
my books again. Over last summer, I picked up and was re-reading some favorite
books of mine. I got through my Tolkien books, and I was hoping to get through
my C.S. Lewis books but didn’t even get to the Narnia books before the semester
started. I did pick it up a time or two during the fall semester, but it was
never enough to finish it, especially since I was also trying to keep up with
my Reader’s Digests.
For me reading Reader’s Digest
normally takes one blessedly sweet two- or three-hour block of time to consume
it. Last semester I often ended up with two, or three, shorter reading
sessions. This semester. I’m lucky if I can get one read before the next one
come out. Right now, I still have one whole article in my March issue that I
haven’t read yet. (Mind you it comes out in the middle of the prior month, so the
April issue will be out next week.)
I suppose this means that when
August comes around, I’m going to be doing a lot of reading to make up for lost
time. That and writing. I haven’t been doing much of that either.
Smile. Make the day a brighter
day.
