Next Semester

Today was registration day for next semester at school.

I have been torn. I am excited about moving ahead with my education and am anxious to complete as much as I can, as soon as possible. Ideally, I'd quit my job and go to school full time. Of course, this is not an ideal world, and realistically, I'm not ready to give up my day job, so to speak.

Besides the job thing, I have this other pesky thing to contend with: fibromyalgia. I'm learning to manage my symptoms and most of the time I do OK. I can usually deal with pain without large amounts of medication. Sometimes the fatigue is so bad I just have to stop everything. But mostly, I'm dealing with it.

Taking 2 sciences courses with lab sessions for each class has been knocking me out this semester. I spend a minimum of 13 hours at school per week - not counting homework time. Combine this with a more-than-full-time job, a marriage, and a widowed mother for whom I am the only social outlet, and it gets overwhelming.

So, I've been swinging between moods of "I can do this again next semester and get my prereq Biology and Chemistry done" and "Good Lord, there's no way I can keep up this schedule for another semester."

My decision? I signed up for Inorganic Chem II (continuation of what I'm taking this semester), plus an on-line speech/communications class. The university I plan to attend for my degree requires students to have one speech class - and none of my previous course work exempts me from the requirement.

The on-line course will allow me to pick the time when I work on it, and I don't have to go on campus at all. That will be a help to me, and I'm knocking out another prerequisite class too.

I think it's a good compromise.

The "speech" class is really interpersonal communications. I think it should be fairly easy for me. I wouldn't mind taking the Public Speaking course either, but you can't do that one on-line, can you??