Relax and breathe

Well, I had a meeting with my advisor today.

My issue, basically, was that I am taking 21 credit hours this winter in order to fit everything in so I can graduate in the spring. Since this is my 5th year, I sort of want to be done with school. I'll do my student teaching in the spring, but I still have one requirement left over. I thought I wasn't going to be able to fit it in this winter, since I was already taking 21 hours and it conflicted with another lab (Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy ... sounds fun, eh?).

My advisor told me to email the professor of this leftover class, PBIO 475, and see if he would allow me to miss one day out of 3 days of lecture each week. He replied that since he posts all of his lecture notes online after class, that would be fine. I will just have to read the lecture and ask him questions if anything is unclear.

Super! Now I can definitely graduate in the spring, but in order to do it, I will have to take 24 credit hours this winter.

I didn't even know that was legal.

For some reason, I am feeling really anxious about all of this. Not only is the "real world" pushed up a half a year, but I don't know how I'm going to survive 24 hours of science classes. Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy (4 hours of lecture and 6 hours of lab), Plant Speciation and Evolution (3 hours of lecture), Plant physiology (3 lecture hours and 2 hours of lab), Diversity of Life (3 hours of lecture and 2 hours of lab), Science Methods (4 hours of lecture and 20 required observation hours in a local classroom).

I AM OVERWHELMED ALREADY. I need to graduate this year. There really isn't any way around it ... for some reason most of these classes aren't offered in the fall/spring, so unfortunately they all hit me at once.

I spent my first 2 years as a music education major. Changing to science education after my sophmore year, I will have completed the 5 year science ed degree in 3 years. I will graduate with over 300 credit hours and a GPA of approximately 3.4 (assuming that my science classes go well next quarter ... not a guarantee). The next step is finding a job once I graduate.

I also wanted to train for the Boston marathon, which is in April. My training would start approximately when classes for winter quarter are supposed to start, so unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to do it. I qualified 2 years ago, and your qualification is only good for 2 years. That means that I'm going to have to re-qualify if I want to run Boston again. That is unfortunate ... because once I get a full-time teaching job, I don't know if I'll have the time/energy to put in that much time running. If I attempt to train for Boston during the winter, I have a feeling I'll be really unpleasant to be around.

Not to mention that Adam is getting a job somewhere other than Athens, and I will probably be too busy to see him much. I won't be able to have a job during the winter, so that means NO MONEY. Which is probably the biggest stressor of them all right now.

Oh, and I also have a bump on my forehead that may or may not be skin cancer, but I have to wait until January to get it checked out by a dermatologist. I googled it, and in my expert opinion it looks just like a pyogenic granuloma, which most likely isn't cancerous but could be.

I feel like pulling out my hair. I told God this afternoon that I feel overwhelmed and praying isn't helping much of anything. I figure there isn't any harm in being honest, because He's going to know how I'm really feeling regardless of how chipper I try to sound to everyone else. I don't feel like He has His hand in this at all, even though I know that is completely untrue.

Man, this entry was a boring downer. Ok ... I'm done for now. Apologies.