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Jun. 25th, 2015 03:02 amSo, I failed my Stats class. Had a massive anxiety/depression spiral that lasted a week, and on the other side of it now I can see the good parts - in that I really do have an epic support system. The day of my final, after the test, I was sitting in my car in the parking garage at FIU feeling like death and despair, and I had a new, lengthy fb message from my friend Jenny about how wonderful it had been to see me while we were in Tampa, and how great my kids are. On the drive home, I got a random "I love you and am so glad you're my friend" text from someone else. When I unlocked my front door, Jake was standing there asking how I'd done, and when I said, "pretty horrible" he gave me a hug and pat my back.
At the time I appreciated those things in a mental way while my insides continued to churn with I HAVE RUINED MY FUTURE MY FINANCIAL AID WILL BE SCREWED GRANT WILL HAVE TO WORK FOREVER I WON'T GET A DEGREE I'LL JUST BE PAYING STUDENT LOANS OFF LIKE A JACKASS, FOR NOTHING. Now that I'm 3 days into re-taking the course*, and calm, I can reflect that I am truly privileged to be able to say those things out loud, in a muffled monotone, facedown on my sister's bed while she raises an eyebrow from the other side of the room. We laid on the floor together, ordering chinese takeout and contemplating the ways we self sabotage. It could be worse.
The peak evening of my misery, after all, featured a heavy chest and a tight throat but also involved drinking an entire bottle of wine while talking on the phone to my friend Kristin about her epic adventures, and then having lots of great drunken sex with Grant. Text received the next morning said something along the lines of, "you were snoring less than 2 minutes after the last time you came; it was adorable."
Most of it wasn't that fun, though. I had about a half dozen terrible nightmares, frequent headaches, constant stomach cramping. I felt like I was acting - woodenly - anytime I observed my kid's latest cartwheels and LEGO creations and drawings and Minecraft structures.
Hopefully, in 10 years, this will seem like the most melodramatic horseshit imagineable, on my part. I'm sure it didn't help that I also started my period. I am pretty emotional and irritable the day before I start and exhausted the first day of, every month, regardless of circumstance. Though that doesn't generally come with panic or sleep disturbances.
I did very well in my Summer A Neuropsych class, which was EXTREMELY interesting and somewhat challenging, but in a totally doable way. Now in addition to the Advanced Stats I'm taking "The Individual in Society," which is basically a random BS easy class to fill in some needed credits, with a teacher known as being lenient. There is a lot of reading, but I am ok with that, and read fast.
According to my advisor, I MAY still be able to graduate in December as planned. It depends on whether I can take the third course in my "research sequence" in the mini-session at the end of fall semester...she said they only let people do that if it's the last class they need to complete their degree, which it will be in my case.
This teacher I have for Stats now seems like such a dream, after my last one... he explains everything like we're 5, in clear english, with perfect handwriting. Previously I had a professor with a very thick accent and terrible handwriting, both of which really matter when you're learning a subject filled with new words and odd symbols. He was also a PhD level Statistician who spends most of his time doing research for the university and teaching grad level math majors, so he often needlessly overcomplicated things or neglected details he thought should be obvious. The new guy covers all the same material, often in ways I'm sure the old guy would have thought were dumbed down or repetitive, but I understand things on a much deeper level with the hand holding. This guy also cares about the social context and nuance of the problems, which REALLY helps me contextualize everything; the other guy obviously felt the words were superfluous and pulling the numbers out was "all we had to worry about."
To be sure, I had some major personal hurdles to get over regardless of my instructor - it was a blow to my pathetic ego to get to a point of realizing I'd have to work this hard daily at something academic to have a chance at it, even when that means forgoing things I'd rather be doing, or disappointing my family. I am spoiled on thinking college is something that can be squeezed in around the edges of my already-full life. That has generally been the case thus far; especially if I'm willing to settle for Bs here and there.
*That was Summer A, this is Summer B. They're 6 week back to back mini-sessions, so it's a lot of pressure but it's also over faster.
The 100 Days of LJ Challenge seemed like such a great idea in theory. In practice, I just refuse at this point in my life to prioritize blogging if it's stressful to do so. There was a time years ago when it was very important to me to get the pictures up and record the funny anecdotes and make a note of the recipes, and sometimes I miss that a lot - but a lot of the time when my week looks like this, it just feels like another thing that's very hard to make time for.
Monday:
-Sorting out schedule shifts at FIU for Summer B given my failed course - involved waiting for an appt with my advisor and standing in a long line at enrollment, filling out forms, etc.
-Selling/buying books.
-Bill paying errands.
-Getting my debit card sorted out because something was flagged for security - which complicated bill paying errands.
-Ananda at the Orthodontist.
-Spending an hour and a half, with Isaac, searching for our Deathly Hallows DVD, then a downloaded file, then trying to find a file to download, then trying to figure out what's wrong with uTorrent, before finally going through this ridiculous process in the tv room with this new system Grant's installed - at one point I was actually googling how to get the screen to stop displaying upside down, on my phone, while Isaac stood on his head using the keyboard to do as I said. Then we finally bought it through Amazon Instant Video, only to find that even when we turned up the tv, DVD player, computer, and Amazon movie window volume...the audio wasn't working. Checked speaker wire, restarted everything, blah BLAH BLAH. Gave up when it was far too late to start a movie, which we still haven't gotten to (though Grant has fixed all our issues with an annoyingly quick and simple lot of solutions).
Tuesday:
-Isaac at the psychiatrist for his monthly appt - which went very well, I love that guy and think he really likes Isaac.
-Taking Elise to "Get Smart" to spend her leftover birthday money, as promised (involved MUCH browsing and calculation). She ended up with a Hula Hoop, a Playmobil set, and some kind of stackable multi-crayon drawing...thing.
-Of course by then the two of them are starving, and then we need gas, and his prescription needs to be dropped off.
-Surprise very interesting long distance phone call for the drive home (this was a good thing).
-Aaron, for the 10th time, needing to talk extensively about his woe and misery because his girlfriend dumped him. He's entering the anger phase of grief. It's obvious to him, now, that this text-based relationship existed mostly in his own head, which is just making him lonelier. Thank god we have cats to cuddle, because he does not want mom hugs about it. The piano songs are all very very sad. Between the two of us, this past week, I swear.
-Everything from Mon and Tues on the schedule for this Summer B Stats course, which is actually a lot. I spent about 2 hours locked up in my room with math, and felt absurdly proud of myself that I didn't veer off topic towards other parts of the internet a single time.
-CRAMMING in going to see Mad Max with Annie like she's been begging me to for weeks...it was a late night movie run, 11pm-1am. Her 3rd viewing of what she claims is her favorite movie (she'd already seen it with Grant and with friends). FWIW, it really held my attention, and was thrilling in that it was totally fearless and like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was also an awful lot of high strung tension for an entire 2 hours, which I find kind of exhausting, but I still recommend it if you can handle some gore. Be compelled by the fierce female protagonist, the bevy of gradually developed "lovely wife" characters, and the old lady biker gang kicking ass with a suitcase-full of seeds in tow.
Wednesday:
-All my Stats work for this day - about an hour of note reading and video watching, followed by 30 minutes of problems, and 10 of checking my answers, basically...but interspersed with lots and lots of kid-bickering and telling, because apparently today was the day Legos could only bring grief.
-Realizing how out of practice they are with actually accomplishing their daily chores and dealing with the awful transitional stage of beginning to truly enforce that again. Along with guiding A&A through the process of making an apple cinnamon bread pudding for tea, it all had my math time dragging out over about 4 hours.
-Taking Ananda and Aaron to better thrift stores to the north as promised, for their cosplay shopping. Isaac scored a brand new looking HP tshirt in just his size, that has Snape on it and says, "Severus Snape - Friend of Foe?" $1!
-Taking Ananda, Aaron, and Elise to derby practice.
-Tackling my filthy kitchen.
Thursday:
-All 5 kids dental cleanings and checkups. We fill the whole office, they sit in a row in every exam chair they've got, each with their own hygenist and the dentist moving from one to the next.
-Stats, either before the dentist or between these other things?
-meeting Kathy and her kids at Laura's for giant dinner that I provide and cook in Laura's kitchen, for the 13 of us
You know what I'm saying? Our last weekend was like this, it's just always kinda like this lately. Stats teacher only schedules work on weekdays so I'm hoping to get a couple of days worth in over the weekend and have more downtime next week. And I do actually have to accomplish something in my other, filler class, before it sneaks up on me.
Grant and I are so good at juggling things and being close. At cuddling and murmuring to each other when I climb in bed next to him before I black out, and texting and fb messaging each other throughout the day. We send each other links and listen to podcasts and news stories from the other on rides, and while washing dishes. I found an "I love you" note in his familar-as-my-own handwriting, in my wallet, the other day when I opened it up. So much of what I accomplish would not be possible if he weren't able to work from home some days, and cook dinner many evenings. I felt like he deserved the whole world on Father's Day, though he settled for a family trip out, a bunch of homemade cards, and an elaborate dinner I made him while spending two hours on the phone with my own dad.
This is a video made by our friend Shaun, with a Lego cowboy of Jake's, and an arrow Jake made of Legos. Jake took pictures of both, on green construction paper, and sent them to Shaun to animate "like when you pick a character in a video game." He's THRILLED with the results, particularly the credits:
And this is Elise, showin' off her skillz. Facebook tells me that anyone who has the link can see it, so hopefully that works despite my generally locked down facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Tina.Hernandez.Walker/videos/10153019627983262/?l=6152874696235359619
At the time I appreciated those things in a mental way while my insides continued to churn with I HAVE RUINED MY FUTURE MY FINANCIAL AID WILL BE SCREWED GRANT WILL HAVE TO WORK FOREVER I WON'T GET A DEGREE I'LL JUST BE PAYING STUDENT LOANS OFF LIKE A JACKASS, FOR NOTHING. Now that I'm 3 days into re-taking the course*, and calm, I can reflect that I am truly privileged to be able to say those things out loud, in a muffled monotone, facedown on my sister's bed while she raises an eyebrow from the other side of the room. We laid on the floor together, ordering chinese takeout and contemplating the ways we self sabotage. It could be worse.
The peak evening of my misery, after all, featured a heavy chest and a tight throat but also involved drinking an entire bottle of wine while talking on the phone to my friend Kristin about her epic adventures, and then having lots of great drunken sex with Grant. Text received the next morning said something along the lines of, "you were snoring less than 2 minutes after the last time you came; it was adorable."
Most of it wasn't that fun, though. I had about a half dozen terrible nightmares, frequent headaches, constant stomach cramping. I felt like I was acting - woodenly - anytime I observed my kid's latest cartwheels and LEGO creations and drawings and Minecraft structures.
Hopefully, in 10 years, this will seem like the most melodramatic horseshit imagineable, on my part. I'm sure it didn't help that I also started my period. I am pretty emotional and irritable the day before I start and exhausted the first day of, every month, regardless of circumstance. Though that doesn't generally come with panic or sleep disturbances.
I did very well in my Summer A Neuropsych class, which was EXTREMELY interesting and somewhat challenging, but in a totally doable way. Now in addition to the Advanced Stats I'm taking "The Individual in Society," which is basically a random BS easy class to fill in some needed credits, with a teacher known as being lenient. There is a lot of reading, but I am ok with that, and read fast.
According to my advisor, I MAY still be able to graduate in December as planned. It depends on whether I can take the third course in my "research sequence" in the mini-session at the end of fall semester...she said they only let people do that if it's the last class they need to complete their degree, which it will be in my case.
This teacher I have for Stats now seems like such a dream, after my last one... he explains everything like we're 5, in clear english, with perfect handwriting. Previously I had a professor with a very thick accent and terrible handwriting, both of which really matter when you're learning a subject filled with new words and odd symbols. He was also a PhD level Statistician who spends most of his time doing research for the university and teaching grad level math majors, so he often needlessly overcomplicated things or neglected details he thought should be obvious. The new guy covers all the same material, often in ways I'm sure the old guy would have thought were dumbed down or repetitive, but I understand things on a much deeper level with the hand holding. This guy also cares about the social context and nuance of the problems, which REALLY helps me contextualize everything; the other guy obviously felt the words were superfluous and pulling the numbers out was "all we had to worry about."
To be sure, I had some major personal hurdles to get over regardless of my instructor - it was a blow to my pathetic ego to get to a point of realizing I'd have to work this hard daily at something academic to have a chance at it, even when that means forgoing things I'd rather be doing, or disappointing my family. I am spoiled on thinking college is something that can be squeezed in around the edges of my already-full life. That has generally been the case thus far; especially if I'm willing to settle for Bs here and there.
*That was Summer A, this is Summer B. They're 6 week back to back mini-sessions, so it's a lot of pressure but it's also over faster.
The 100 Days of LJ Challenge seemed like such a great idea in theory. In practice, I just refuse at this point in my life to prioritize blogging if it's stressful to do so. There was a time years ago when it was very important to me to get the pictures up and record the funny anecdotes and make a note of the recipes, and sometimes I miss that a lot - but a lot of the time when my week looks like this, it just feels like another thing that's very hard to make time for.
Monday:
-Sorting out schedule shifts at FIU for Summer B given my failed course - involved waiting for an appt with my advisor and standing in a long line at enrollment, filling out forms, etc.
-Selling/buying books.
-Bill paying errands.
-Getting my debit card sorted out because something was flagged for security - which complicated bill paying errands.
-Ananda at the Orthodontist.
-Spending an hour and a half, with Isaac, searching for our Deathly Hallows DVD, then a downloaded file, then trying to find a file to download, then trying to figure out what's wrong with uTorrent, before finally going through this ridiculous process in the tv room with this new system Grant's installed - at one point I was actually googling how to get the screen to stop displaying upside down, on my phone, while Isaac stood on his head using the keyboard to do as I said. Then we finally bought it through Amazon Instant Video, only to find that even when we turned up the tv, DVD player, computer, and Amazon movie window volume...the audio wasn't working. Checked speaker wire, restarted everything, blah BLAH BLAH. Gave up when it was far too late to start a movie, which we still haven't gotten to (though Grant has fixed all our issues with an annoyingly quick and simple lot of solutions).
Tuesday:
-Isaac at the psychiatrist for his monthly appt - which went very well, I love that guy and think he really likes Isaac.
-Taking Elise to "Get Smart" to spend her leftover birthday money, as promised (involved MUCH browsing and calculation). She ended up with a Hula Hoop, a Playmobil set, and some kind of stackable multi-crayon drawing...thing.
-Of course by then the two of them are starving, and then we need gas, and his prescription needs to be dropped off.
-Surprise very interesting long distance phone call for the drive home (this was a good thing).
-Aaron, for the 10th time, needing to talk extensively about his woe and misery because his girlfriend dumped him. He's entering the anger phase of grief. It's obvious to him, now, that this text-based relationship existed mostly in his own head, which is just making him lonelier. Thank god we have cats to cuddle, because he does not want mom hugs about it. The piano songs are all very very sad. Between the two of us, this past week, I swear.
-Everything from Mon and Tues on the schedule for this Summer B Stats course, which is actually a lot. I spent about 2 hours locked up in my room with math, and felt absurdly proud of myself that I didn't veer off topic towards other parts of the internet a single time.
-CRAMMING in going to see Mad Max with Annie like she's been begging me to for weeks...it was a late night movie run, 11pm-1am. Her 3rd viewing of what she claims is her favorite movie (she'd already seen it with Grant and with friends). FWIW, it really held my attention, and was thrilling in that it was totally fearless and like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was also an awful lot of high strung tension for an entire 2 hours, which I find kind of exhausting, but I still recommend it if you can handle some gore. Be compelled by the fierce female protagonist, the bevy of gradually developed "lovely wife" characters, and the old lady biker gang kicking ass with a suitcase-full of seeds in tow.
Wednesday:
-All my Stats work for this day - about an hour of note reading and video watching, followed by 30 minutes of problems, and 10 of checking my answers, basically...but interspersed with lots and lots of kid-bickering and telling, because apparently today was the day Legos could only bring grief.
-Realizing how out of practice they are with actually accomplishing their daily chores and dealing with the awful transitional stage of beginning to truly enforce that again. Along with guiding A&A through the process of making an apple cinnamon bread pudding for tea, it all had my math time dragging out over about 4 hours.
-Taking Ananda and Aaron to better thrift stores to the north as promised, for their cosplay shopping. Isaac scored a brand new looking HP tshirt in just his size, that has Snape on it and says, "Severus Snape - Friend of Foe?" $1!
-Taking Ananda, Aaron, and Elise to derby practice.
-Tackling my filthy kitchen.
Thursday:
-All 5 kids dental cleanings and checkups. We fill the whole office, they sit in a row in every exam chair they've got, each with their own hygenist and the dentist moving from one to the next.
-Stats, either before the dentist or between these other things?
-meeting Kathy and her kids at Laura's for giant dinner that I provide and cook in Laura's kitchen, for the 13 of us
You know what I'm saying? Our last weekend was like this, it's just always kinda like this lately. Stats teacher only schedules work on weekdays so I'm hoping to get a couple of days worth in over the weekend and have more downtime next week. And I do actually have to accomplish something in my other, filler class, before it sneaks up on me.
Grant and I are so good at juggling things and being close. At cuddling and murmuring to each other when I climb in bed next to him before I black out, and texting and fb messaging each other throughout the day. We send each other links and listen to podcasts and news stories from the other on rides, and while washing dishes. I found an "I love you" note in his familar-as-my-own handwriting, in my wallet, the other day when I opened it up. So much of what I accomplish would not be possible if he weren't able to work from home some days, and cook dinner many evenings. I felt like he deserved the whole world on Father's Day, though he settled for a family trip out, a bunch of homemade cards, and an elaborate dinner I made him while spending two hours on the phone with my own dad.
This is a video made by our friend Shaun, with a Lego cowboy of Jake's, and an arrow Jake made of Legos. Jake took pictures of both, on green construction paper, and sent them to Shaun to animate "like when you pick a character in a video game." He's THRILLED with the results, particularly the credits:
And this is Elise, showin' off her skillz. Facebook tells me that anyone who has the link can see it, so hopefully that works despite my generally locked down facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Tina.Hernandez.Walker/videos/10153019627983262/?l=6152874696235359619
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