My Way

Once in awhile, you can post Frank Sinatra's "My Way" unironically.

For this was hands down my hardest semester ever you see--and it was entirely self-inflicted.  I took four graduate-level classes (five if you count Teacher Training), including two seminars, one of which was the infamous Walt Whitman seminar.  This was all in a frankly reckless bid to finish the last of my doctoral course work in only two years flat.  I was advised explicitly against such a foolhardy load by my adviser, at least one classmate straight-up laughed in my face when he learned I was doing it, while another said that whenever he got stressed-out this semester, he just took comfort in the fact that at least he wasn't me.

Moreover, part way through the semester, I learned that the undergrad Spanish class I took last Spring, more than just fulfilling my foreign language requirement, actually did count towards my credit hours, and thus I hadn't actually needed to take 4 classes after all!  But by then I was already in too deep; now my pride was on the line, and it was less that I needed to prove to others that I could do it, than that I needed to prove it to myself.

This all came to a head throughout the month of November, when I realized that if I had any hope of finishing these four papers (two 20-pagers, two 10-pagers), that I needed to start on them now.  My Fall Break was one in name only, as I stressed out each day trying to churn out a complete rough draft of each.

I did.  I turned them all in.  Early.  I'm really tired now, and have never needed a month-long Christmas break more than I do now.

Although I did sleep in every day--I arranged my schedule that way.  That's right, I slept in all the time and was still uber-productive, so suck on that Stephen Covey.  I also took all Sunday's off.  Every single one.  I did it my way, indeed.  As such, I'm pretty I have earned the right to sing sincerely, with feeling, that there were times, I'm sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew.  But through it all, when there was doubt, I ate up, and spit it out.  I faced it all, and I stood tall, and did it myyyy waaaayyyy!

Update:  Grades now posted.  Straight A's.  My first 4.0 at Iowa.   And more, what's more than this, I did it myyy waaayyy!