Ugh.\u00a0 I feel like this has been my worst semester yet.\u00a0 Not in terms of grades, or in terms of social life, or even in terms of workload, but just…in terms of my classes.\u00a0 Classes, and just school in general.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I’ve figured out.\u00a0 My best, most enjoyable classes are the ones that really push me, and the most miserable classes are ALWAYS the ones that are too easy.\u00a0 If it doesn’t help me to learn and grow, if it doesn’t change my perspective, if it doesn’t open new doors of knowledge to me, I hate it.\u00a0 All the rote things that we do for grades–tests, papers, homework, attendance quizzes, extra credit assignments, all that stuff–if it’s all for the grade’s sake, I just go crazy.\u00a0 I can’t stand it.\u00a0 And if it’s all about memorizing data and spitting it back like a machine, I feel like I’m going to lose it.<\/p>\n
Well, that’s the way I’ve basically felt all semester.\u00a0 To make it worse, all of my classes overlapped to the point where it started to feel like I was listening to exactly the same lecture<\/em> over and over again.\u00a0 When that happens, what little there is about the subject that is interesting just seems to dissipate.<\/p>\n I can work really hard when I have the motivation.\u00a0 When I’m doing something that I love, I can really accomplish some amazing things.\u00a0 But when I don’t have the motivation…it’s almost impossible to bring myself to sit down and do it.<\/p>\n That’s basically been the story of this semester: trudging through day after day of work, pushing myself to do things that I didn’t really want to do. I suppose I did a good job of it…but it was very<\/em> draining.\u00a0 It took almost as much work just to force myself to sit down and focus as it did to actually do the work.\u00a0 As a result, even though the workload wasn’t particularly hard or particularly exhausting, I never felt that I had the time to do what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n I suppose it would be immature to say “I’m not going to do what I don’t want to do,” but at the same time, life is too short not to get out and have fun.\u00a0 If you’re doing what you love, you can have fun and work hard at the same time.\u00a0 Like this Earth, I don’t have an inexhaustible supply of energy.\u00a0 I need to find and develop renewable resources–the things I love to do, the things that engage my imagination and passions and really energize me–and build my life on those.\u00a0 I wouldn’t even care living poor, so long as all my needs were supplied.\u00a0 I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and utterly burned out.<\/p>\n Interestingly enough, because of this crappy semester, I am more motivated than ever to break into publishing and get paid full time for writing novels.\u00a0 My plans haven’t changed yet, but now I want, more than ever, to actually make a living doing this stuff.\u00a0 Most of my inhibitions now are gone, it’s just…well, that first step.\u00a0 It’s pretty hard, and I don’t want to build up my expectations too much only to find myself out of school, without a job, and without money to pay the rent.\u00a0 Especially not in this recession.<\/p>\n But I do <\/em>want to become a full time writer now–at least, more than before.\u00a0 I don’t know if it will ever happen, but if I’ve dedicated this much of my life to it, why shouldn’t I shoot for it?\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 We’ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ugh.\u00a0 I feel like this has been my worst semester yet.\u00a0 Not in terms of grades, or in terms of social life, or even in terms of workload, but just…in terms of my classes.\u00a0 Classes, and just school in general. Here’s what I’ve figured out.\u00a0 My best, most enjoyable classes are the ones that really… Continue reading I am SO ready to wash the dust of this semester from my feet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[34,42,30,39,599],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-college-life","tag-frustrations","tag-life-decisions","tag-schoolwork","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-51","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}