Too Many Hours, Not Enough Time

     Lately I've been realizing how college actually works.  Everyone runs on different schedules, taking different classes, learning different materials.  Now depending upon your major, you may be taking 12 credit hours or 16.  While this number doesn't seem like a crazy jump, in reality it's a huge difference.  

    They say that in college for every one credit hour you have, you are supposed to spend three hours outside of that class, studying, or doing homework.  So as you can imagine, 16 credit hours in a week results in 48 hours outside of class working as well compared to 12 credit hours and 36 hours of work.  That is a whole extra 12 hours in a week studying.  It seems extremely overwhelming and makes me wonder, how do people even do it?  How are students expected to go to school, work a part time job, and spend 48 hours studying?  Those numbers don't even account for spending time with family, eating, bathing, etc.  I was hoping that after the first couple weeks of school I would've gotten the hang of everything but unfortunately, I haven't yet.  It is a lot of stress and a lot of time that I still have yet to discover how to balance.

    There really just isn't enough time in a day.  The worst part is that I need that time in a day and I don't know how to make the time for it.  Life feels like a never ending cycle of waking up, going to school, going to work, doing homework, and going to sleep.  Everyday over and over feels the same and every day I'm exhausted and I still don't put in as much time as I need to.  With everything going on I wonder am I even doing this right?  Is there something more I need to be doing?  Something less?  I've come to the point of exhaustion where I can't even believe that this is what my life will be like for the next four years and yet I'm still not doing everything correctly.

Rhetorical Analysis Work

    I've never written a rhetorical analysis before, so when we were told in class that is was part of our project I was a little nervous.  I knew very well about the components of one before, consisting of the ethos, logos, and pathos, but never knew how to incorporate them together.  With the due date coming up I feel like I am not fully convinced that my paper is a good read.  Being that it is my first college paper, I''m not really sure what to expect grade wise and content.  My documentary that I watched made the general concept of the paper easy to write about and I had no problem picking an appeal but I hope that I explained it in the right way.  I spent this whole week stressing about the paper and making sure everything is correct that I've come to the point where whatever I have now is what I have to turn in.  

    I didn't want to stress myself out so much that I rethink everything and change the whole essay around.  Normally, papers and such don't seem to bother me too much.  I think being that there are a lot of news and firsts that this time around I expect a lot more out of myself and I don't have as strong of a starting point as I normally would.  I've put a lot of work into this paper and I think that I did the best I could so now all I can do is wait for the grade results back and see how I did.

Exam Anxiety

 Being that this week was the fourth week of school means that it was exam week.  I had two exams this week and another two next week.  My first ever college exam was on Thursday and I was so nervous and so stressed I almost gave myself an ulcer.  Literally, I had to go to urgent care to make sure that nothing was wrong and they told me that I was too stressed.  I’ve dealt with pre-test anxiety but nothing like this before.

I’m a nursing student.  I have a lot of classes and a lot of them are really, really hard.  I’m still trying to learn what works best for me for studying and doing my work and quite frankly, I still don’t know.  With all my homework, studying, and work I don’t know how I can manage to fit enough time for my schoolwork let alone do it properly and that really worries me.

Fortunately, early this morning I got my results back for one exam and I had nothing to worry about.  I got a grade that was way higher than I ever thought I would receive and for that I am super thankful that whatever I did, paid off.  Guess I can say that I almost gave myself an ulcer for nothing.

Not Enough Time

 This weeks post I wanted to dig into the balance of school-work-life.  As college students, we all go through similar problems and a big one is knowing how to balance going to school, working and having a social life.  Just getting into college, I don’t have the best understanding of how to manage all of it.  This topic is something that I am sure almost everyone has related to and I thought it needed to be discussed.

Right now I’m at school Monday-Thursday in class, that doesn’t count the time at home studying or doing homework.  I also work anywhere from 20-25 hours a week while still trying to see my friends and my boyfriend when I can.  It’s not easy balancing it all and with exams coming up, I realize I can’t.  I don’t know what works best for me, or what I need to change, or how to handle everything and it’s really stressing me out.

The only thing I know I need to do is to cut back my hours to focus more time studying.  It’s hard trying to see friends when I can too.  How am I supposed to do it all?  Am I just not supposed to hang out with my friends and my boyfriend?  That would be really hard to do too.  

The overall idea I wanted to share with this post is that we are all struggling.  We all are trying our best to do what we can, and when we can.  Being in college while juggling adult duties isn’t easy and not everyone can do it.  If your can, you should be proud of yourself because we really are all trying our best.

After Innocence or Before Conviction?

 After watching the documentary “After Innocence,” I have a new perspective on the justice system and all legal matters in it.  One of the first things that got to me early on in the documentary was when a clip was shown from the Phil Donahue Show in 1993.  In this clip, they introduce DNA testing in the jails and there are several gentlemen sitting on stage whom were wrongly accused for crimes.  What made me feel hurt inside was the look on their faces.  These people had families, friends, some even had communities, that looked up to them or relied on them and the justice system had failed them.  All of these men had been wrongfully accused of crimes they didn’t commit and they had to suffer out the consequences for actions that were not even theirs.  In the clip it was noticeable that some of them were teary-eyed and some had already been crying.  What they went through wasn’t fair and no one should ever have to experience what they did.

Something that really surprised me and stuck out was when Nick Yarris began telling his story.  He was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder and served 23 years in jail.  When I heard that my mouth legitimately dropped open.  The way he spoke about his experience was heartbreaking and unsettling.  He was sentenced to solitary confinement and he said he experienced so many different things when he was released that it was like a whole new world.  Another part of his story that stood out to me was when he told the judge “You and I both know I didn’t kill anyone” and he said that the judge couldn’t even look him in the eye.  I can’t even begin to imagine what these people are going through and everything that they went through.  It causes permanent trauma that is very hard to recover from.

What still remains with me after viewing is what do people plan on doing to continue the process of exonerating people.  There are so many people still wrongfully convicted with the real criminals still wandering the streets.  Technology is more advanced in today’s world and I hope that now the likelihood of a situation like this happening often is very low.  My heart goes out to these people and their families as well as those who are currently in those situations.  A feeling that stayed with me was heartache.  I said it before and I’ll say it again, I really do feel for these people and their families.  I truly can’t imagine what they must be going through.

If we were to include research in our summaries they would no longer be summaries.  They would become reports of just random data and facts being put onto a paper.  The research can also alter our opinions on the documentaries themselves rather that forming a raw opinion based on just the movie.