Stressin'

Hello again readers!  Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far.  Crazy how fast time flies when you're having fun (hopefully) on the weekends but it seems that time just drags by during the week.

This past week actually flew by for me though because it was my spring break.  It was a pretty stressful week for me unfortunately.  Totally not what you would like spring break to be like.

If you don't want to read a really lengthy, no picture blog post I would skip this one.  It's a doozie!

It started on Friday the 16th.  I met with my program adviser to plan out what classes I would take this summer and fall, hopefully so I can graduate in December.  Pretty exciting stuff because it worked out that I will be able to graduate in December!

I found out that a class that is absolutely required in order to graduate would not be offered again until the spring semester of the 2012-2013 school year.  Um yea, not working with my plan of graduating in December. This class is however offered as a second 8-week course starting on the 26th.  I managed to get PR (permission required) to take the course from the professor on that same day I met with my adviser.  After a stressful afternoon and evening of emailing my adviser and not getting the answers I needed, and another kinda stressful Monday where I emailed someone else who could get me the answers I needed since my adviser hadn't responded to my follow up email, I was able to be enrolled in the class.

Got that all figured out, right?  Wrong.

I need a textbook for the class and my plan was to drive to campus on Thursday or Friday (when I didn't have to work) to rent the book since it was written by the professor and cannot be found online to rent or buy.  Thankfully I had the good sense to call on Wednesday to make sure a book would be available for me to rent.  I was informed that text rental was closed for the week since it was spring break.  I would not have handled driving to campus (probably a 30-45 minute drive) to find out that text rental was closed very well after my fiasco with my car on Tuesday (even though it worked just fine Wednesday).

So, while I'm dealing with the stress of adding a last minute class to the remaining half of the semester I'm also dealing with the fact that in order to graduate as planned I need to do an internship for credit this summer.  While the internship itself isn't a problem for me, setting up an internship and realizing I need to give a ten minute presentation at the end of the semester along with some other hard work stressed me out.

I would like to have an internship with my current employer as I would like to be able to continue working there in the fall when I have to go back to a part time work schedule to accommodate school.  I figured it would be easier to do an internship with them rather than some where else if I wanted to be able to work there in fall before potentially looking for employment else where (a "big girl, real world" job) after graduation.

The good news is my manager and her boss are on board with doing what they can to help me out with setting up an internship within the company.  The other side, not necessarily bad news, is that I was caught off guard when I met with them to discuss the possibility of an internship.  I was imagining them to tell me what I could and couldn't do and they were more or less asking what I would like to do.

After talking to my mom (per the direction of my manager's boss - she has knowledge of a lot of departments at my employer since she's worked there for 20+ years now) I have come up with a plan, or at least a proposal for what I would like them to try and work out for me.  But even though I have this idea of what I would like to do now there are still so many unknowns that have me stressed (concerned? worried? not sure what feeling I would place with this) and not confident in what my summer will look like.

Oh yea, and besides the internship I also will be taking a summer course online throughout the whole summer.  I'm basically going to have a FULL year of school in order to graduate in December.  While I'm able and willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill the plan of graduation in December I'm also feeling overwhelmed and scared maybe about everything that I need to do in order to make that happen.

That's what's been going on inside my head all week right along side the never ending thought train of what I need to do with the classes that will be resuming or beginning next week.

It feels good to get all of this "stuff" out of my head.  Guess that's what I needed.  If you read all of it, thanks!  Any advice you can offer me on how to handle all of these thoughts and feelings are appreciated.

Have you dealt with a situation like this, or similar in some way, during your college days?  How did you handle it and did it work out as planned?