3 Ring Circus: Overwhelmed

I have been overwhelmed with school lately. I had two research papers due last week. I am what you would call a procrastinator. I have had tons of reading due each week for both of my classes. I have even had papers to write almost weekly in my Comp class.

My worst week in school had to be the week before Thanksgiving break. I got a "C" on my Process & Analysis paper. I didn't realize that my paper HAD to be typed and on top of that I written my paper in pencil. Which according to my instructor is a big no, no. My thinking was: since I didn't have a computer at home, I would legibly hand write my paper and it would be best to write in pencil so that if I did make a mistake I could easily erase it. To me it made perfect sense.

Turns out I made no sense at all. He told me that my paper was well written, but giving me a "C" was gracious. I was so mad yet mostly embarrassed. I could feel my face turn red which I knew meant tears were about to stream down my face. I found myself silently crying in my chair. I could have played the poor card. Honestly, the only computer access I have is at work. We have a computer at home, but we disconnected the Internet to cut back on expenses and on top of that there is not a working printer in our house. Ultimately, it was my own fault and I should have typed it up at work. The worst part of the story, I couldn't stop crying. I felt so stupid. I kept telling myself "Stop crying you silly girl!!" I was trying to keep my head down while "taking notes." Two hours later, at the end of class, my eyes were just red and puffy. I ran out of class so fast and bawled thee whole way home. At home, I placed all of my pencils in a drawer and took all of the pens. I hate learning things the hard way.

After ending my week on such a great note, I took advantage of my Thanksgiving break. I did not touch a book until the Sunday before class. Where I found myself crying, again, because I had SO much to do not and not enough time. My responsible inside voice reminded me, "Geeze stupid!! You did have enough time, but you chose to do fun things instead of just getting your homework done and out of the way. It's your own darn fault!!" It was hard to feel sorry for myself.

As a result, last week I did not get to bed earlier than 1:00am. I prayed that my three to four hours of sleep would feel like eight. Tuesday night I even contemplated just pulling an all-nighter. I went to bed at 2:30am that night...or should I say the next morning. There were two days last week that Patrick woke me up and said "Mom, am I going to school today?" When I came to and realized that the sun was up and I wasn't - "CRAP!!" All I could do to get to work on time was splash water on my face and throw some clothes on. Patrick had to point out how red and scary my eyes have been looking. I believe it was Friday morning that Wyatt turned off my alarm clock. Again, I awoke seeing that the sun was up and I wasn't. When he noticed that I was up he came into my room and said so sincerely "Oh mom, you're alarm was REAL loud so I turned it off for you so you could sleep." It's really hard to get mad at a three year old when his heart was in the right place.

I found myself living on coffee, diet coke and Snickers Bars. I did manage to polish off most of the left over Halloween candy. Which would be the reason why my pants are so snug this week.

This is life when you are trying to go to college full time, work full time, a mom and a wife full time. Eric deserves an award. He's been great taking care of the kids and distracting them so I can get my work done.

So far it appears that my sleepless nights have paid off. After taking my final last night in Sociology, I got may research paper back - I got an "A"!! Now I have to take my final tonight in my English Comp class and see what kind of grade I got on my 14 page research paper. Then I will wait in agony for final grades to be posted....

In the mean time, here a pictures from some of my "fun time."