By The Skin of my Teeth...

This has been a difficult week for me. Probably the hardest week so far this year for me. I feel I just barely got through it by the skin of my teeth. What made it so hard? First of all, as I mentioned in my last post, I was sick for the first part of the week. I really felt miserable. I knew that I had some big assignments due by the end of the week, but I could not motivate myself to work on them like I should. So, what did I do? I procrastinated! I had to write an Annotated Bibliography for my advanced writing class. This assignment required me to find 15 sources for the paper I am going to write on Music Therapy, and to summarize each source and explain why each source would be important for my paper. Researching 15 sources is not an easy, quick task, and I had to do it all the night before and the morning of, giving myself only a couple of hours. It was an intense session of baring down and focusing in, but I managed to complete the assignment minutes before I had to head off to that class.

Then, today I had to take a test for my Social Psychology class, and I waited to study until last night. Not only that, but I hadn't read a lot of the material yet that the test covers which made studying quite a bit harder than usual. So, I just really focused and studied for several hours last night, and a couple more this morning. I was extremely worried about the test, but I feel that I was able to do a good job on it and I'm feeling optimistic about my grade. I made a big mistake though in that class this week. I had a paper due on Wednesday night and I completed the assignment on Tuesday night and forgot about it. On Friday night, that paper popped in my head and I realized I never turned it in! This teacher does not accept late papers, so there really is nothing I can do about it but take the 0, even though I did the paper. It was frustrating but taught me that I need to keep better track of my assignments.

On a more positive note (after all this negativity) I had a really good day on Wednesday and had some realizations. I felt really calm and peaceful about the Social Psychology test I was stressing over. It turns out that these feelings were right, because I was able to study and felt I did well on the test today. I also thought about my writing that day and decided that I would like to pursue professional writing. I have had a creative writing class this semester that has forced me to write 2,000 words of my novel each week. This has really helped me realize how much I love writing- I look forward to doing this assignment above many other things during the week. I also have been getting very positive feedback on my writing from my writing group and it is making me very hopeful. Even the very critical Joe says that I've been improving. So, I would really like to write more and finish the novel I'm working on and then see if I can get it published. There is a publishing company called Shadow Mountain that publishes fantasy books for younger readers, and I think it might be a good avenue to try to go down.

So, that is what is going on in my life. It has been a tough week, but I am starting to get more hopeful for the future and I'm starting to set more goals so that I can improve. I hope to have more interesting things to talk about next week!