Meet panic stricken Mindy. Panic Mindy drinks an obscene amount of diet coke (think twelve pack in 3 days), has trouble making sense when she speaks, and has to keep moving at all times. Here's why I've morphed into panic Mindy. Today was the first day of my summer session classes. Last summer I took 3 classes, which is a lot (equivalent to 18 hours during the regular semester). And it wasn't bad, I was pretty bored actually. My maymester class was hard and a lot of work, but doable. This summer I'm taking religion in America and great narrative works. Religion in America will be really great, the professor is good, I like the topics on the syllabus, and she gives enough extra credit for everyone to get an A pretty easily. The only homework we have is about 50 pages of reading a night, which is pretty doable for a summer class.
Great narrative works is a different story. In my childhood I was often described as a bookworm or a voracious reader. I would lock myself in the bathroom and read until my mom took my books away and gave me a 2 hour/day reading limit. Now when we go on vacation to the grandparents, the question when I return is not what did you do, but how many books did you finish. It's not uncommon for me to read a book a day when I really get in to it and have nothing else going on. The key is NOTHING ELSE GOING ON. Well, for great narrative works, we are reading 6 books, one is a classic, three are medieval, and 2 are modern. And I only really like more modern books, maybe late medieval if it's really good. Let me just tell you the pace at which we have to read to keep up. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (over 1,000 pages) will be read cover to cover in 5 days. Moby Dick will be read in 3. When we read Moby Dick in high school, it was a race to finish it in 2 weeks. I have no idea how I am going to read that much, write the 10 corresponding 5 pg. papers, work 20 hrs. week, and maintain any kind of a life. Enter panic stricken Mindy. The first thing to go will be working. I have enough in savings to cut back to 10 hrs. week and still be very ok. I'll wait and see, but I'm thinking that I'd rather cut back on work and be a little tighter with the $. I want to be able to have a social life, be able to watch the kids at church when people want me to, and have some me time. So we'll see. This week is a trial period for work, and I'll decide on Friday if I can keep it up.
1 comment:
Deep breaths...panic is not of God! (Ok, that was more for me than for you :)) Remember, you've had more experience reading college age stuff, so reading more "basic" stuff will be easy. Think about when you were a kid, the first time you read a chapter book--now if you go back and read it, it'll take you maybe an hour instead of a whole day. Now that's not going to happen with Moby Dick, but you're a more sophisticated reader than you were in high school, so it won't take as long. I would recommend making notes about where key passages are so that you can find them during the discussion!
Happy reading :)
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