Blog # 8 Holiday Vacations

Hello everyone! It has been few weeks since my last post and for this I am truly sorry. I figured I would take a few weeks off from writing to give me a chance to reconvene my thoughts, and to save things to talk about throughout the second half of the semester. With this is mind we are coming up on Thanksgiving break, and I thought I would discuss all of the inns and outs of Holiday vacations. One thing that I have found especially helpful for me through the semesters is to know my classes. Know all my homework assignments, when they are due and what is expected. The fall semester is usually the hardest for a lot of people because of all the bigger holidays. My fall semester usually consists of my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, my son’s birthday and then Christmas. This is not mentioning all the other family members’ birthdays, baby showers, cook outs, anniversaries etc… Most families have split families now days, so when we have Thanksgiving and Christmas it is usually divided up between all our families, we call it Thanksmas! So on one weekend we will have Thanksgiving with my mother’s side the family, the next weekend we have my son’s birthday, then Thanksmas with my father’s side of the family, then Thanksmas with my fiancé mothers side of the family and then Thanksmas with his father’s side of the family. Which means we are doing Christmas shopping before Christmas, and are busy every weekend traveling. This becomes hard, especially seems how I use my weekends to do homework, and reading for classes. After being here for a few semesters I found myself trying to save me from my annual anxiety attacks, by doing homework long before it was due, just so I knew it was done. Every week that we did not have a lot of home work or even no homework at all I found myself working on papers that were due, or even projects that was due at the end of the semester. I did not want to worry about doing midterms/finals, and all the papers, and projects while I was trying to do last minute Christmas shopping and preparing for a birthday party for my son. I know that this can be hard for people, especially who are trying to raise a family. I try not to over stress myself in the process. It is kind of like, if I have the time then great. If I do not have the time, then I am not going to try making a Thanksgiving feast out of starch. In order for me to work on things I know what needs to be done at the beginning of the semester, break it up into smaller portions and do it accordingly. Therefore I am not overwhelmed by the time they are due because by this time they are already done and probably past in. Also I have found that in doing my papers and projects before they are due, they are giving me more time to review them, make changes where changes need to be made. In some cases I have even been able to communicate with the Professor, send them out to them and get useful feedback from them, finding out if I should add anything or change anything. This becomes very productive and my results end with a higher grade then I would have originally gotten. I rarely ever got the chance to review my own work, because I would do them so close to the actual due date. I now find much of my own mistakes at doing it so much earlier than other classes. The simple mistakes that you see when you get your papers back and you say, “Wow, I can’t believe I messed that up. What was I thinking?” or my famous one lately, “What in the world was I talking about?” A lot of people say that I have Obsessive Compulsive Personality disorder, because I need to have things done just right, or they need to be in before they are actually due. All I know is that I like having things done before hand so I can take my vacations and spend the time with my family. The last thing I want to be doing while my kids are home from school is homework. I would like to be outside sliding with them and having a fun time. If there is no snow, then we find other fun things to do. I do not like my life always being about homework and school, so I take these vacation weeks as a break. Besides if you don’t take breaks when they are giving you are likely setting yourself up for failure. You will become so overwhelmed, tired, frustrated, and exhausted that you become further behind in all your classes, and no ambition to do anything. So keep in mind that it is always better to do things ahead of the game instead of falling behind schedule.