I almost felt guilty for spending the last couple weeks in my PJ’s, playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. Almost. Then I realized, with the new years comes my new semester, in which I’m taking 6 classes. My last semester ended on December 12. I was finally able to take a break from the self discipline and structure I have to put on myself for school, and I should take full advantage of that break.
Many people mistakenly think taking your classes online means it’s easier than going to school physically. However, that is incorrect. If you can’t maintain strict self discipline, time management, and your own structure, you can’t succeed. You have the same responsibilities as you would in a classroom. There are still weekly due dates, papers, tests, quizzes, midterms, finals, lectures and discussions. While in some formats, you might work at your own pace, mine is not one of them. Essentially, you not only have homework due, you still have classwork due. Where in a classroom you’d have your lecture, discussion, and teaching, this is all lumped together when learning at home.
By my second semester, I developed a good strategy.
1. Get up early, get dressed as if I am actually going to class. This puts me in the mindset that I have something to get done that day. I add having my coffee, and checking in on my favorite social sites and blogs to this part of my day.
2. Set an end of the school day for yourself. I found that if I worked all day and into the evening, I felt like I was never getting finished. So I started following my kids’ school schedule. From 8am to 4pm I am in class. I break for lunch, and take a few shorter breaks in that time but mainly I focus on my work. This leaves me time in the day for things I enjoy, like playing games, watching TV, or just browsing Tumblr and Twitter if I want.
3. Pacing myself. No more than 2 classes a day, or I’ll burn myself out quickly, and start feeling overwhelmed. I try for Monday through Wednesday, but sometimes that doesn’t work for me, and I might do Mon, Wed, Fri, or some other variation depending on when my due dates are.
4. I refuse to obsess about my GPA. I give my absolute best, in every class. But sometimes, that ends in a C+. It happens, I’m not going to excel at everything, and I have to accept that. Even if that is a greater challenge than I’d like.
5. On days I have no classes to work on, I run errands on preferably only one day. The rest, I don’t worry much about getting dressed, I don’t look at my school website, I relax, and sit in my PJ’s if I want to. These are my days off, and I need to enjoy them as much as possible.
6. Ask for help around the house! My husband is usually in a training cycle when my semesters are in full swing. He can’t help out mych, nor do I expect him to. Not when he works from 4am to sometimes 10pm 6 days a week for 14 weeks at a time. But my daughters do help tremendously, from taking over household chores (mainly keeping the counters in the kitchen clean, and vacuuming the floors), to cooking dinner.
Without these in place, I stress out, and become useless. So while I may feel like a sloth demon for being generally lazy the last few weeks, I know I have earned it. And I know I better enjoy it as long as it lasts because from January 9 to Sometime in March or April, I’ll be back in the school saddle again. And this one’s going to be a rough ride. But I look forward to it, and to the New Year.
