Hey y’all, a new semester is upon us, and I have mixed feelings. I’m so excited to see my friends and get back to learning stuff, but I know how much work I’ll be doing. I’m taking six classes, working, and doing research- which may be more than I can handle at once. So, I’m trying to get started on stuff early and mentally prepare for the next few months. But even if it’s going to be heinous during the semester, I know that it’ll feel incredible when I pull it off.
So first, because I know how much I’m going to be doing during the semester, I’ve been working on some of it over break. Nothing can organize a research project like a good old fashioned shelf crawl. I’m studying clothing from the Crusades, so I went to Dimond Library and found the fashion history shelf and pulled out 23 books that I thought would be helpful. Of course, I put back most of them, but by the end of that day I had 8 books to really help me on my way to being able to start research. Even if I didn’t read through them all, just finding the shelf gives me a big leg up. Physical books are a real help for research papers, even if it seems easier to just find the academic articles, so they’re a good place to start.
Speaking of starting, I also started on class reading early. I emailed a few of my professors and asked if they could send me anything so I could get a head start on the reading and one responded, sent me the syllabus, and told me how impressed she was with me taking initiative! I only did this with professors that I’ve had before and had a positive relationship with, but because I went ahead and did it, I was able to order the textbooks for super cheap online, and I got out the main textbook from a library until the one I had ordered came in. I was able to get almost three weeks ahead of the reading!
I also started drawing up my calendars and trying to sort out schedules. And let me just take a second here and talk about how I feel about planners and schedules, because I have very mixed feelings. So, I love how schedules look. I love drawing them out and color coding them and making them look pretty and neat and it makes me feel organized down to the minute. But about two weeks into the semester I start ignoring them, or forgetting to update my weekly planner, or not even opening my planner at all. That’s okay I think though, because it makes me feel better in the short term, and if I ever start to freak out because I have no time to do anything, I can just look at the stuff I organized earlier. So I think it’s okay to spend hours making a pretty calendar and organizing study time and all that, even if you forget it in your desk for the rest of the semester.
I know that the start of a new semester, or year, or decade, is intimidating. I’m intimidated. I’m so intimidated. This last semester nearly wiped me out, and I felt like very seriously giving up. I didn’t, but it still rattled me. I keep thinking things like, “What if I’m not good enough to handle all the work I’ll be doing this semester?”, but thinking like that helps no one. Positivity isn’t enough to fix all the problems from last semester, and neither is hard work. But with both of them, and support from friends, family, and whatever resources I can find on campus, I think I stand a fighting chance.
This semester is going to be hard. But I’ve been getting ready for it, I’m gearing up now, and I think it might be time to just go for it.
I think it’ll turn out just fine.