Summer School, the NHK and Wheezing

(Note, as of this post I'm no longer importing from my previous blog, so the dates will now be accurate)

Lately I have been swinging back and forth on a pendulum between WILDLY AND INSANELY BUSY and BORED OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND. It's really kind of unnerving. I, like most creatures who seek sanity, enjoy a certain equilibrium in my life. And even during the spring semester at A&M, when everything was new and difficult and I had to get into a new schedule and a new town and a new school, I fell into things rather easily and sort of went along at a dogged but consistent pace. And that's how I make the awesome grades, folks (also by dropping ECON, fuck you professor Thompson [name changed to protect, well, me]). Uh, anyway.

So now the spring semester is over and I got out with a 3.5 GPA (booyah, bitches!) and that's peaches and all, but I thought to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be great to graduate 1 semester ahead of schedule?" So I sat down with my advisor and plotted out a means to do this which is completely un-fucking-reasonable, but the only way it could work. It reads something like this:

Summer 2010 - 6 hours

Fall 2010 - 12 hours

Spring 2011 - 18 hours (this is necessary for a very convoluted reason, but suffice it to say it's the only way this will work)

Maymester - 3 hours

Summer 2011 - 6 hours

Fall 2011 - 15 hours

Spring 2012 - GRADUATE FUCK YES I AM EXHAUSTED.

Now, keep in mind that this is assuming that I pass all of my classes and do not drop any classes for the remainder of my baccalaureate career (holy shit I spelled baccalaureate right on the first try!). This is probably going to be impossible because my collegiate career has so far gone something like this: "Psssh.. I don't want to take a science class. I'll take Art Appreciation instead!" and "Pssssh... I can take my math classes later, I want to take Advanced Juggling." and "Why should I take a stats class now? I would rather take Underwater Dancing." ad nauseam until I get out of community college and into university and now have all these really hard classes to take.

But, I am continuing with this plan AS IF IT'S ACTUALLY FEASIBLE! Hah! Reality be damned, I am forging ahead like a... well, like an optimist, I guess. I know what you're thinking. That schedule is demanding at times, but for a full-time student, it can totally be done! Right. And if I didn't have to work while going to school, that wouldn't really be a problem. If I could devote all of my time and mental faculties to my studies (instead of, say, teaching my coworkers how to use Facebook [true story] and teach the secretary how to use Excel [also true]), I would likely be able to maintain a decent GPA and get all of this shit done simultaneously. But, I work hard for my money. So hard for my money. I work hard for my money so you better treat me right.

Or something.

This whole thing started because I wanted to tell you about my summer classes. I am only taking 2 classes right now (6 hours) because that's the max they allow you to take per session (thank god someone regulates this shit). The first course is ECON, and it's an 8-week course. You heard me. Two months for Microeconomics. The second class is American Lit and it's only a 4-week course. So I am trying to cram 2 classes which normally encompass an entire semester into 8 and 4 weeks, one overlapping the other.

I thought I was doing really well, too, and keeping up with things. I would log on once or twice a day, do an assignment/quiz/essay or two and go on my merry way. But these classes move so quickly that even missing a day or god forbid TWO days can pile work so high you can't even see over it. In the last 24 hours I have completed:

6 quizzes in ECON

2 quizzes in LIT

1 practice test in ECON

4 Discussion board posts on our readings in LIT

1 extremely comprehensive post in ECON where I actually posted my own supply/demand chart

and 2 comments on other people's posts in LIT

And I did most of that today. And I have a huge essay due on the 19th. And I have an ECON comprehensive exam tomorrow that has to be proctored because I'm doing distance education. And did I mention I'm working 40 hours a week?

So I try to get a lot of this done at work and normally, it's really not that big a thing. I do what I need to do efficiently and often have time leftover, but TODAY was a total clusterfuck. We had people from the goddamn NHK (that's like PBS only for Japan) here to interview someone in the office, and it was a new student conference, so we had parents and kids floating around amongst the Japanese camera men and me trying to sort of like, communicate and not break the expensive camera equipment they were having me tiptoe around and take pictures of the whole thing with someone else's expensive camerawhile I'm nervously trying to remember my Japanese and probably saying things like "duck fish penis" or something absurd because I fail at life.

I was so nervous I would drop the camera, or trip over the lights set-up or the video recorder or god forbid break some delicate, thousand-dollar (yen?) instrument and be cast out with condemnation to wallow with the whores and lepers. And on top of that was so nervous about my Japanese and now I'm embarrassed to even think about how it must've seemed to those camera men (who were perfectly fine and totally nice guys).

I'm insane. I should be tired right now but I got it into my head that I should go for a run tonight. I'm quite out of shape and so, you know, let's hit the streets. I used to do some jogging about a year ago until a sprained ankle put me out of commission. And well, basically, my lungs haven't gotten a lick of work since. So instead of going "jogging" i went "wheezing" and it fucking hurt and I got dizzy and couldn't breathe but then a really great jogging song would come on my ipod (like Telephone by Lady Gaga or The Distance by Cake) and I'd beinspired to run some more even though I can't breathe, heart attack be damned!

So I only ended up going about a mile, and out of that I probably run 1/4th of it. Maybe a tad bit more. But fuck me, when I got home I was shaky and wobbly and wanted to collapse on the floor in the living room but somehow managed to make it to my bedroom where I stripped naked and collapsed in a sweaty heap on my bed. I wanted so badly to drink some water (my dumbass didn't take any with me when I went "wheezing") and I even had a glass in arm's length, but I know that ice cold water on super-heated innards equals horrible. So I waited, and I breathed and I tried to regain some semblance of a normal heart rate. Then I took one big mouthful of water and actually held it in my mouth until it reached an equivalent temperature (took me 3 times to spell temperature, but I can one-off baccalaureate? What the fuck?) before actually drinking it.

So that was horrible and awful but the worst part is, in those first moments of "wheezing" (you know, before the wheezing), it actually feels really good to be out and be active. So good, in fact, that now I'm just WIRED with energy even though it's bed time. I used to really enjoy jogging but deep down I know I'm so out of shape I need to start smaller. Maybe not less distance, but less huff'n'puff for sure, so I can build up my cardio or aerobic-whatever-the-fuck, etcetera. But I have these moments in the evening where I'm bored and I end up watching old episodes of Animaniacs or Invader Zim (I'm a trendwhore, clearly), and being bored perpetually sucks. I think if I would just get out and do something active instead of being bored, I'd feel better.

You know, after the wheezing.