Today

Today has been long and both physically and emotionally draining. I just found out that one of my best friends is going through some very tough times with her family and she is very upset. I feel badly because there isn't a lot I can do for her except be there when she needs me. It seems that when it rains it pours.

Today at school was also immensely stressful. It's that end of semester crunch time that anyone who's ever been in school knows is dreadful. Every teacher wants some huge final project or exam or combination that there simply are not enough hours in the day for...blah, blah, blah…

I also had my academic advising appointment today and it didn't go too well right off the bat. The first woman I met with was trying her best to be helpful but she wasn't able to look up my transcript online, which was very frustrating to me. I had all my paperwork there and--I thought--all my ducks in a row but apparently not. To make a long story short she wasn't really able to help me and I got very upset. I'm not sure whether it was just a culmination of all the stress from school, not passing the math portion of the MTTC test, struggling with chemistry, etc. or what exactly but I was very overwhelmed and the whole thing really went wrong.

I got stressed and flustered and ended up leaving the appointment rather abruptly (almost in tears) with apologies that I would come back after printing my transcript. She followed me down the hallway, at which point I was bawling. She arranged for me to meet with another adviser, which was great except that I was having a lot of trouble controlling myself by this time. I managed to catch my breath and calm down enough to talk to the next woman who was very friendly and (for some reason) perfectly capable of looking up my information online. I'm still not sure what that was about but oh well. I had (literally) about 30 different pieces of paper or packets; all from different advising appointments, orientations, meetings, etc. Each of them had a different set of requirements and a different set of information, none of which is easy to make much sense of. That, combined with all the other stresses going on right now just sent me over the edge. It was so FRUSTRATING and EMBARASSNG! I am not typically a crier and I especially hate crying in front of people I don't know. My reaction surprised me probably as much as it did them...the whole thing was so uncomfortable and I really felt like a basket case. In the end everything got sorted out and adviser #2 threw away more than half of my stack of "required" paperwork and re-organized the remaining information so that I could make more sense of it. She told me clearly and specifically what I can and can't register for before getting admitted into the college of ed and she helped a lot. By the end of the day I got all set up for next semester and here's my list of classes:

• Geography
• Multicultural Children’s Lit
• Feminist Theory
• Human Development and Learning
• Field Experience Online Practicum

I feel pretty good about my schedule overall and I’m excited about most of these classes. One drawback is that I had to take one Saturday class in order to get my schedule to work out but that’s not the end of the world, especially since Michael works most Saturdays now anyway.

All in all today has been exhausting. I brought my laptop to school, which I don’t normally do. It’s quite bulky and heavy and that one small change made my day a lot more complicated. But at this point I’m just complaining so I think I’ll stop for now. All’s well that ends well and, with the exception of my concern for my friend, I’m OK now.

MSL