Journal for 13 April 2008: Trainwreck Retrospective
Had it dawned on me that taking two compressed courses at the same time would be the functional equivalent of taking three full-time courses for the months I’d be in school, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to do it. But I did, and it was a mess.
It’s kind of difficult to describe how utterly exhausted I am, both mentally and physically. I knew two courses would be a lot of work, especially considering how busy the first few months of the year tend to be at my job, but I was still taken aback by what I got myself involved in. My accounting class in particular was extremely difficult for me, and many weeks I found myself putting in 25-30 hours a week in an effort to keep up. (My Operations class, which I generally found very interesting and happened to be very relevant to my job, definitely suffered as a result.) I tried to tough it out, though, figuring it was a learning experience, it would only be one semester, and I’d know better and stagger my classes in the future. It wasn’t until the last few weeks that it dawned on me that failure–and I mean “fail” quite literally here–was an actual possibility.
98% of my life over the past two months can be divided into one of three categories: Work, school, and, coming in at a distant third, sleep. I barely saw my son the past six weeks; if I was home while he was awake, I was probably studying, and as a result missed so, so much. I kind of feel like I abdicated my responsibilities as a parent, dumping way more than was fair on Lisa. My phone broke, and I basically had to ignore that as I didn’t have time to get it fixed. (It’s still broken.) My body is a case of deferred maintenance: Over the past two months I’ve canceled doctor and dentist appointments, and skipped an orthodontics adjustment and an eye exam, all in an effort to save an hour here or there. For all practical purpose, I haven’t exercised since early February.
And what did it get me? Practically nothing. Even if I do pass my Accounting course–and, again, that’s a very big “if”–I learned very little. My retention for these two courses has been remarkably small. Last semester, when I took only one course in an effort to ease my way back into academia, I had time between my co