Term 3, Week 1

I should do this earlier in the week.  This gives a slight overview of how busy I am each week.  If you have trouble reading my chicken scratching, you will see that this week’s assignments include introductory biographies, discussion questions, a quiz for each class, participation requirements, and assignments, along with other specific requirements.  Each red checkmark means that I have completed that particular assignment (or a portion of that assignment).

I do try to be organized each week, because it is the only way I can keep track of everything.  When I first started back at school, I did not have a board.  That was bad.  I am a natural blonde, and I find that is an excellent excuse for my occasional scatterbrain-ness.  Once I started using the board, I found myself keeping track of each week’s assignments much better.

I occasionally have a quote at the bottom of my board.  My favorite is “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”  It reminds me that I need to go slow, and not attempt to rush my work.

So there you have it, a low-tech solution to staying organized with my LAHM life.

Back to school

Yes, it has been a long time since I’ve blogged.  However, one of my resolutions is to include blogging as part of my homework.  Since my new term begins today, I only found it fitting that my first post back should occur today.

Since the end of August, I have been a full time student.  Unless I find a job, I anticipate completing my degree by the end of April, 2014.  Attending full-time school while caring for our son during the day has been quite the challenge.  We no longer have daycare aside from one afternoon per week (thanks, Grandma!), so it is a juggling act.  With any juggling act, the difficulty increases when a new item is added.  In our case, the newest item is that my wife is now attending the same college part time.  Thank goodness our son goes to bed at 7!

This term, I am taking Elementary Statistics and Management Information Systems.  Both are required for my major.  I am a little excited about both.  My wife knows that I am a bit of a math nerd, so Stats should be interesting.  And the MIS class is the first big step towards my degree.  I am looking forward to learning more about my intended field.

I have a few posts in my head that I will post over the next few days (hold me to it!) Topics include:

• The flaky instructor
• Dinner options
• How I spent my winter break
• Fun mis-spellings

Thanks for reading thus far.  I hope I haven’t bored you!

Food poisoning and other excuses

One thing I adore about online learning is the flexibility.  Since I have started college this year, I have been able to work on my courses from home, my mother’s, hotel rooms in far-off places, etc.  There are very few acceptable excuses for not completing homework.

Last weekend, we drove our niece back to The Big City to put her on a plane to go home.  She had spent three weeks with us, and she needed to get home to start her junior year in high school.  My wife, the boy, and I stayed in The Big City to do some shopping and enjoy a little R&R.  The wife was not feeling too great on our drive home, but since she usually has gastro issues, I did not think much of it at the time.

About an hour and a half from home, I was playing around on my phone while the baby dozed in the back seat.  All of a sudden, the wife pulled over, opened her door, and threw up on the highway.  She got cleaned up and we managed to make it home without too much incident.  She went straight to bed, still complaining about stomach issues (I won’t go into too much detail here).  I managed to get the baby into the house, along with a few essential items.

You are probably wondering “What does this have to do with being a LAHM?”  Well, Sunday was the last day of my college’s term.  I had a final exam due by midnight, along with a couple discussion posts and a peer review.  I would have worked on those assignments in our hotel room, but the keyboard on my laptop was broken.  I needed to wait until I got home to the desktop (the “school computer”) to complete everything.  Since the baby usually goes to bed by 7, I did not anticipate a problem completing all of my tasks before I collapsed into bed myself.

The thing is, the baby had spent the three nights previously not sleeping, and decided that night time was party time.  Parents everywhere know what that means.  A 7 pm bedtime was NOT going to happen.  At 6:30, I started his wind-down routine (change into pj’s, prepare a warm bottle, sing to him while he eats).  He wasn’t having it, and I was starting to get frantic.  With my wife out of commission, I had to call in the big guns.  We are lucky that my mother lives just a few blocks from us (well, it’s a blessing and a curse, frankly), and she was happy to come over and spend some time with the cutest brown-eyed boy ever while I got to work.

Around 8 pm, I started feeling icky.  I needed to soldier on, because I had a lot to do.  I went upstairs to the living room to check on the boy, and he was finally starting to wind down.  Grandma had done an admirable job of wearing him out.  She let him play, she bounced him, she fed him some more bottle.  By 8:30, he was starting to rub his eyes, and by 8:45, he was out.  I thanked my mother for her help, and let her show herself out while I ran to the bathroom.

No sooner had she left the house that I felt the urge to throw up.  In about two minutes, the entire contents of my stomach, including the lovely dinner I’d prepared just a couple hours before, came up.  Again, I will save you the details, but I am sure you can imagine how I felt.  I popped my head into our bedroom and told my wife that I’d gotten “it” too, and that I still had work to do.

So, with a pot to one side of my desk, and my textbook open on the other, I finished my exam and all of my other homework for the class.  I managed to make it to the bathroom a couple more times during that period.  I am surprised how coherent I was in my final postings to the class.

Yes, even with my stomach turned inside out, my wife groaning in pain, and my son refusing to sleep, I managed to complete every last piece of my class.  By the time I collapsed into bed at 11, I didn’t care what my grade on the test was, so long as I passed the class.

Oh, and how did I do on that exam?  Yeah, I got an A.

Avoidance

Hello, my name is Kate, and I am an epic procrastinator.  Either that, or I let my ADD get in the way of my school work.  I would delve into more about it, but there’s Facebook and Twitter and news and blogs and other incredibly fun stuff to read.

Today, I am avoiding writing a three to five page essay for my accounting class.  The boy child is at daycare and the house is quiet, so I really have no excuse.  But I would much rather fold laundry than write this essay.  Did I mention that it is due on Sunday?  Or that we have company for another two and a half weeks?  No?  Maybe I should have.

I have known about this assignment since the first week of the term.  We are currently in week six of this term, which means I should have done research and some pre-writing a few weeks ago.  But again, I’m avoiding the work.  Since the boy child has been in daycare today, I have been able to gather my research, and all I really need to do is write.  You know, just sit down, bang out the darned thing, and finish it.

What are you avoiding today?