A Rotten Beginning

I have just finished my three-week winter term class and have barreled straight into the Spring semester with nary a moment to rest my head. And if the rest of my semester doesn’t improve from the way it has started, I fear I shall be in for some miserable months ahead. There are quite a few reasons to classify this semester as having had a rotten beginning.

First of all, my schedule is the heaviest load hour-wise I’ve had so far. I am attempting 16 hours which means a total of six (6) classes. I have four health care administration classes and two business classes. They are as follows:

• HCA344: Health Systems Management
• HCA442: Principles and Methods of Health Planning
• HCA446: Health Care Informatics
• HCA447: Information Systems Lab
• FIN330: Principles of Financial Management
• MGT300: Legal Environment of Business

Second, my classes are neither placed nor timed conveniently. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have the worst time figuring out what time I need to get up and leave in order to get there and get parked for an 11:00 am class. You just shouldn’t have to get up at 6:00 am for an 11:00 am class. But if you don’t, you have parking issues to deal with, as I found out last week.

I admit I cut it a little close. When there was no doubt that there was not a single parking place to be had in the parking lot I thought surely would have one, I ambled on to Plan B, feeling a nervous twinge in my stomach. On my way over to Plan B, I discovered a new parking lot for commuter students that I had not had prior knowledge of, and because of the time, I just grabbed it. Lots of empty spaces. I knew I would have to climb Suicide Hill, but I’ve done that before. With the added distance of several blocks from the new parking lot, however, and with its gradual incline toward the bottom of where I would begin the Suicide climb, it was almost more than I could, or at least wanted, to bear.

By the time I had reached the top of the hill and then climbed up to the fourth floor of the STH building where my class was to be held, I was in some sort of a pitiful condition. And this climbing experience was not unlike that of the climb up to the FB college retreat Sunday morning chapel service of 2005, nor that of climbing a certain mountain in Montana about ten or more years ago. The climb was bad enough, but it was the blast of heat that greeted me from the classroom that nearly finished me off.

At any rate, my classes are such that I am sprinting from one of the highest classroom points on campus down to Grise Hall (midway down the hill) to my finance class, and then back up hill again to the exact classroom I started from on the fourth floor. I have to make it to my finance class before Dr. B closes the door, so I am hoping Dr. H doesn’t ever get long-winded and keep us late. Thursdays are even worse. I go from STH (top) to Grise (bottom) to STH again (top) and back down to Grise (bottom). And because my classes don’t start early this semester, this parking thing has me a nervous wreck.

The third reason why my semester has not gotten off to a good start is simply because I am not mentally prepared. This all comes from not having had a proper break. The two weeks I had off between the fall semester and the winter semester were filled with holiday activities, including preparing for guests and then traveling—all enjoyable, mind you, but tiresome nevertheless.

My class in the winter semester left me completely exhausted. Dr. W had us do so many assignments in the narrow space of three weeks, it is a wonder I managed to get it finished. We had to write three responses to three critical readings, give a book report—both written and oral—take four exams, write a ten-page paper, and give a twenty-minute presentation on it. Talk about sapping the energy out of a person—that certainly did it!

Dr. W wanted me to go to a finance conference in Louisville this last Friday, and he told me that if I would go, he would introduce me to key individuals in the health care field. That was all well and good, and in fact, I was very interested in going. When it came right down to it, however, I decided I was too drained, both physically and mentally. I have hardly been able to get my backpack packed in time for class—much less, drive to Louisville Thursday night. I finally emailed him and backed out of it, citing the above-reasons of exhaustion. He emailed me back and said he really understands about not having had a break. It seems he is in the same boat.

Fourth—and this is where it really gets rotten—I have either LOST my PDA on campus, or it was STOLEN right out of my backpack. This makes me really sick to my stomach. I have searched every possible logical place, of which there are very few, and after speaking to numerous people about it, I can only conclude that someone else is in possession of my little PDA. I would much rather see it driven over by a dump truck and smashed to smithereens than to not know what has happened to it. I know exactly how the mother of a kidnapped child must feel.

I can’t even say at what point the thing disappeared. All I know is that I strapped it into my backpack at ~9:30 am, and the next time I opened my backpack for it that night at 1:00 am it was gone—almost as if it were raptured! So now I need to figure out what I am going to do as far as taking notes in class, as I had planned to use my PDA to do it. One of my classes has me taking five pages of notes per class period, and I just refuse to hand-write it.

And those crazy eBay shoppers will NOT let me get another PDA for a cheap price. They just don’t respect prior investments at all.

The fifth reason I am gloomy about this semester is because of the dreaded GROUP PROJECT in one of my classes. I despise group projects. Give me a paper to write instead any day!

I guess since I’ve given you all the negatives, I shall also give you the few bright spots.
• Because of a scheduling conflict, my computer lab class has been rescheduled from a hideous spot on my Wednesday schedule to a mere two weekends instead. We are literally going to knock the class out in two weekends—four hours on a Friday night and two hours on a Saturday morning. Yay! It helps me out like crazy to have the Wednesday spot cleared up.
• For only the second time since I’ve started school, I have no classes on Fridays. This is a good thing. It saves a little gas, and it FREES MY MIND.

One week down—Fifteen to go. Six weeks until Spring Break.