I cried a little when I saw my grades from this semester.
Surprise, surprise, right?
It’s not like I haven’t had all A’s before. I did well in undergrad and would’ve gotten into grad school before if I had continued on the route that I had originally wanted.
But it was way different this time. Now I’m married with two kids and work full-time. We haven’t gone more than two weeks without someone in our house being sick. My daughter had another set of PE tubes put in, a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy, with an absolutely heinous recovery, and started play therapy to help with some resulting behavioral issues. We were at an awful daycare that stressed me out every day for five months until we could get into a wonderful new one. We flew out to Arizona for a wedding at a bad time in the semester. Some sleep regression for the baby and many sleepless nights for us. I was never on time for work.
It was crazy. With everything going on, I didn’t do my readings for probably the last three or four weeks of classes. And that Thanksgiving week flu really put me in a bind at the end of the semester. I turned my final paper in 5 minutes before it was due. But I loved what I was learning and felt like school helped me to stay somewhat grounded, even though it added more to my to-do list.
So when I saw that I ended up with an A in my hardest class, of course I cried. While I know that I could have done better and have some plans for improvement next semester, I’m pretty proud of myself. Here are a few things that helped me to have a successful first semester and what I’m going to work on for the next.
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