OUT OF THE BLUE

Summer, friends, is over.

All right, not technically– the leaves are not changing colors, baseball is still in season, and football is not in season, at least not quite yet. My summer, however, is over because classes start on Monday morning. This semester will be different. I have left my full time job, and changed my occupation to full time student. I still plan to work at Badger home football, basketball and hockey games. I am starting a part time IT help desk position at UW. So while I will be busy, I will be able to focus most of my energy on school, where it belongs and will do the most good.

I ended up with two days this week without work, partly to give me time to get books and such ready for classes, and partly to give me some time to make the shift from a full time day job to student life. Don’t get me wrong– I do not intend, at all, to pretend that I am 20 again– but having one’s primary focus be academics is a different frame of mind than meeting data entry production goals every day. In between shopping for books, highlighters, graph paper, and those four-color Bic pens (that are damn near impossible to find), I have made it a point to relax a little. Page through the calculus book, and notes from the past two semesters. Bookmark textbook websites. Play some Quake II. And above all, make sure the batteries in my calculator are fresh. (Calc III and Calc based physics this semester = I’ll be attached to my TI-89.)

The path to get here has been a long one. I have had a lot to overcome, have had to learn different ways to do things, and always seem to have more adjustments to make. I’m good with that.

Monday morning is going to be interesting. I have never had the full daytime MATC Truax experience, since I have had all night and online classes thus far. I might feel a little old. I might feel a little stressed, anxious, or hurried. Probably all of the above.

I will also be the person sitting up in the front of the class, notebook open, reading glasses on (reference feeling old in last paragraph), pen and highlighter in hand, ready to rock and roll.

So yes, my summer is over.

Bring on the math. Bring on the phone calls. Bring on the football, basketball, and especially the hockey.

Yeah, just bring it.

Spring semester 2009 is history. I can sleep now. Speech, and Calculus 2 can be mounted and hung on the wall.

It’s been an, um, busy semester. In addition to my eight hours of classes (so, yeah, half-time+) at MATC I worked at just about all of the UW men’s hoops games, all of the Badger men’s hockey games, the WIAA state wrestling tournament and state boy’s basketball tournament. Oh yeah– I had a regular 40 hour a week job, too.

And oh yeah again– I also completed a 12-week post traumatic stress disorder treatment program at the Madison VA hospital. In the middle of the semester.

This semester my long days had two basic variations:

• Work job 1 0610-1545, study ’till 1900, then class till 2130, then to the gym till 2230 and sometimes foraging for groceries after that
• Work job 1 0610-1545, study ’till hoops/hockey, work 1630-2230 (and study during hoops/hockey)

Most days during the week at around the time I hit twelve hours I was either soon headed to class or making sure my meat was cooked because the Kohl Center’s doors were just opening for the game. A “long day” was about sixteen hours, and a good night’s sleep was about 4-5 hours.

And one final oh yeah– I got BC’s in both classes. They’re not A’s– but considering the circumstances this semester, I’m quite happy with ‘em.

… between work and (especially) school, and other already planned events, I’ll be insanely busy until about the middle of May. I’ll still be on Twitter and Facebook, but won’t have room to add anything to my schedule.

After finals I think I’m going to sleep for about a week.

I have done some serious rearranging of old entries, which included deleting more than a few– so if Google sent you here and you can’t find what you want, my apologies. Google probably has a cached copy of whatever you were looking for. You can also try looking under “uncategorized”, as I’ve dropped a couple of categories as well.

I’m going to try to post things that are a little more meaningful than just “whatever popped into my head that day”, we’ll see how that goes. School and work are still taking up most of my time.