Dr. Royal, you truly have me thinking differently about my education. I wish I took this class when I began at Marist last fall. However, I began as an education major and this is not a requirement for an education major. Honestly, I feel this class should be a requirement for ALL students no matter what their major. This class would be especially beneficial for young students who feel they are sure of what they want to do when they graduate yet have little or no experience in the professional world which can often times alter what we want out of a career and our lives in general. After many years of working in customer service positions, mostly insurance, I can say I do not want to do this forever. Actually, I do not want to do this for much longer. That is what brought me to Marist.
I am both anxious and excited to work on my degree plan. I found the last online session very interesting because I find myself trying to plan for the next semester as soon as I possibly can. I find myself planning far in advance for graduation and I feel really great when I register for the upcoming semester. Designing my degree plan is an assignment I am looking forward to completing. I feel that knowing what lies ahead helps me to feel more organized with my education goals.
Often times I find it difficult to point out my positive sides. Is it my right side, left side, front side? I just don’t know some days J But seriously, it is difficult for me to say, “I do this and I do it well.” Over the course of the last year what I can say about what I have learned is that I can take on a lot more than I ever thought. I work full time, I have steadily taken 9 credits for 3 semesters and even took 6 credits over the summer. I have two young children, I played on a women’s softball team over the summer and somehow I manage to have stayed sane. Okay, mostly sane. I thought of Eleanor Roosevelt’s saying just now, ‘a woman is like a tea bag, you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.’ I am the tea bag and all my hats are the hot water. I have learned about Photography, History, Spanish, various films, novels and I have even learned some really difficult 3D video animation. All of these subjects combined have given me a wealth of knowledge in a short period of time which I plan to use when I complete my Bachelor’s and move on to my Master’s.
What I struggle with the most is making all of this work for me effectively and maybe even more so, efficiently. Often times I am running on empty or waiting until the last minute to submit assignments. Each week I promise myself I will get ahead of the assignments for each class and then I find myself up at 11:59PM submitting that final online posting. One day I ran around in 4” heels on campus desperate for a working printer to print my first paper for a Psychology class I am currently taking. I did not succeed yet was grateful when my professor allowed for me to email her the assignment. Last week I simply overwhelmed myself and when I forgot my assignment for the same class, well, I broke down in tears. A 35 year old grown woman, a mother no less, cried to my teacher because I was so overwhelmed with work, school and the events of the week. I suffered from poor planning on my own part. I was alone in my office at work, coupled with some personal stress and I simply broke down. It happens from time to time.
Once again, I have made this promise to myself this week to get ahead of the assignments. So far I am feeling good about this. They say that it takes 21 days for something to become a habit, whoever they are. Let’s see how things look in 21 days and if I can get ahead of all of this work I have coming up. It really is a balancing out for me. I think that as adults we suffer from challenges teenagers do not have to deal with. It is not just about having a full time (or part time) job and a family. Simply put, as an older individual my stamina is not the same. I can not stay up until 2AM working on a paper and then function the next day. Youth is no longer on my side. And yes, there is the family and the full time job. Some areas of my life are not flexible. I have to be flexible with the areas that are and do my homework in every moment that I am able to all the while keeping my head above water.
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