Falling Off the Tightrope

For nearly the past 8 weeks since I started my full time job, I've been precariously wobbling atop the tightrope of my college career trying to maintain some sense of balance. It's as if my work is giving me continually more and more balls to juggle as I'm shimmying across and this last week represented the point where juggling and balance were lost as I went careening downwards(thank god for safety nets).

In short, I'm going through an intense training program at work which involves learning massive amounts of information(both written, oral, and practical) in a short amount of time. My fellow co-workers and I are then required to pass a series of written and practical certification exams. The culmination or "final" if you will was held this past Monday which consisted of a 19 page two-part exam with mostly essay format questions. The second half of the exam consisted of information from 2-4 page reports I and my co-workers had written and presented on Friday of last week. It was clear much cramming needed to take place last weekend to prepare.

Although daunting, what scared me more was my trigonometry test coming up on Wednesday. Consequently, much cramming was needed in order to succeed on that test as we finished the chapter last week and hadn't yet applied the material.

Still both were totally doable in the grand scheme of things. That is, until my engine died on the way home from work Thursday night. Living in public transportation scarce LA, arranging a ride became top priority. Thankfully I have some exceedingly smart, resourceful, and hard-working friends without whose help I would not have been able to get to work or school this week.

Monday was my 6 hour written exam at work which left me glazed over and burnt out. I noticed that my brain seemed to be operating in "safe mode" thereafter. I was able to study some on Sunday and prioritized my time towards trig with subsequent study sessions during lunch breaks and all evening Monday and Tuesday. However, I noticed a trend that my brain was not able to remember anything new. Seriously. The information we covered the previous week in trig would not stick no matter how many breaks I took, matcha tea I drank, or herbal energy pills I popped. Not even a good night's sleep started things fresh.

By Wednesday I was frazzled, desperately trying to grasp math concepts during my work lunch break and fatigued. I went into my test that evening with a sense of impending doom but a positive effort to do my best and see what happened. I was actually surprised by the fist half of the test which in my opinion was pretty easy. The second half of the test slaughtered me. It was full of new concepts we learned that I truthfully had not absorbed. Without even getting the test back I know for a fact that I failed it.

I'm completely disappointed about that, no doubt. I left class Wednesday feeling stupid and directionless. Since I tend to be pretty hard on myself, I tried to take into consideration all the crap that went down in my life this past week from my car dying to the unique situation of having to study as much if not more for work at the moment as part of training. Granted, this training will pass eventually but it still upsets me that my time is being so torn from concentrating on my studies at the moment. If I didn't have such passion for this job I know for a fact that I wouldn't be able to handle the added stress.

What I'm taking away from this experience is the ill-effects of procrastination and how it will turn your hair prematurely white. I've learned that if you are attempting to undergo a stress-induced stroke brought on by holding down a job and going to school that you should take advantage of every valuable minute of every day. In fact, that's probably a good lesson for anyone. The weekends I was decompressing from work I could have been studying my work material and homework so I wouldn't have gone through system overload at the last minute. Carpe diem, students!