Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Back At It

A promise is a promise. Although I posted yesterday that I would throw out something new today, it was more a promise to myself than anything. Since I value integrity in others, I feel it is important to exhibit it myself. To that end – today’s thoughts:

After the first two days of the new semester at Sac State, I have attended the first session of all five of my classes. They are: Constitutional Law, and California State & Local Government on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Politics – Opinion & Participation and News Reporting I & II on Tuesday and Thursday. 15 units total. According to the formula of 3 hours homework for every unit I can expect to have 45 hours of work on a weekly basis… in addition to the 15 of class time.

Now, I know that this formula is grossly inflated and that in reality I’ll be spending considerably less time on homework than that. However, in my journalism classes (news reporting I & II, which in reality is one 6 unit class) my professor emphasized that this estimate is dead-on. I have every reason to believe her. My other classes will involve a lot of reading, especially constitutional law where we will be reading many complete Supreme Court cases (not the brief, not the summary, not the majority, concurring or dissenting opinions, but the whole damn case!).

This semester, more than any thus far, is intimidating to put it mildly. Looking at it from two days in is daunting. However, of the many, many lessons I’ve learned through experience is that although it is no illusion – it is a huge amount of work, it doesn’t have to be done all in one day. In other words, my job for today is to today’s work. That’s it. Tomorrow will come soon enough and when it does I’ll deal with it. If I focus on everything I have to do for the next four or five months I’ll be looking at an insurmountable pile of work.

Furthermore, although in retrospect less so, last semester (16 units) looked just as formidable at the beginning. I felt overwhelmed but plugged away day by day and not only survived it in one piece, but did so with a 3.94 GPA (4 As and an A-). So I know I can do it. I know the road looks much longer looking ahead than it will be looking back. I’ve been here before; I know how to do this. And I know that the rewards of work, patience and perseverance will be felt internally in a few short weeks.

Now I gotta git to work…

2 comments:

Ellen said...

Wow! Almost a 4.0 GPA.... that's wonderful! If you lived in the state of Georgia, they'd pay for your tuition in full as we have the "hope scholarship" program here. It pays for practically all your schooling depending on your average.

Best of luck on your new classes, and heavy workload!

The Zombieslayer said...

I felt overwhelmed but plugged away day by day and not only survived it in one piece, but did so with a 3.94 GPA (4 As and an A-).

That's very impressive. My best semester I've ever had was a 3.83. But as I said in one of your earlier posts, people who pay for their own education (including loaning it) are more likely to take it seriously.