It’s been quite awhile since I posted anything, but that’s ok. The end of last semester was not very pleasant for me, and I was focusing all my energy on just making it through. After the semester ended, I took some time off work, visited family in Florida, and just relaxed.
So what happened last semester? As I have mentioned a few times already, last semester was extraordinarily draining and difficult. However, I am happy to report that things mostly ended well (or at least well enough that I’m still in school). My academic misconduct charge resulted in a verdict of “guilty” for me, because I “did not do enough to prevent someone else from cheating off me”, which I think is an absolute load of shit. However, they reversed the sanction, giving me the grade I earned on the exam and simply counting this as my first strike for misconduct. My big consolation here is the knowledge that the d-bag who cheated off me didn’t pass the class (I did, but barely).
On top of the misconduct charge, I realized midway through the semester that I was in over my head. I was enrolled in more credits than I could realistically handle. However, due to my financial aid situation (a long story… I may write about it some other time), I am not allowed to drop any classes once school starts for the semester. Because of this, I had no choice but to continue muddling through. The closer I got to the end of the semester, the farther behind I fell. By the end, I was seriously concerned that I would not get the grades I needed to remain in school. Fortunately, I managed to scrape by with the bare minimum (just over a 2.0 for the semester) I needed to keep going. Having learned my lesson, you can bet that I will not be taking more than three classes at a time again.
One big drawback of last semester was that I almost completely stopped running and dancing. As a result, I am starting almost from scratch in my training plans now, and I feel much like I did last year when I started running. However, I have taken bigger strides toward keeping myself accountable and setting higher goals for myself this year. Last week I registered for the KS Half-Ironman, a race involving a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1-mile run. For all of this, I have 8 1/2 hours to complete the race to be considered “successful”, which means that I have my work cut out for me when it comes to training. To help keep me on track and get me prepared, I signed up for a staff membership to the KU Recreation and Fitness Center, which gives me access to personal training. So far, I’ve had one training session where we planned out the next several weeks of my training schedule, and we’ll be starting into real cross-training this weekend. It’s going to be interesting.
So what’s in store this semester? I am taking fewer classes (12 credits total, including Genuine Imitation), and as I mentioned above, I have restarted my exercise and training. On top of that, I have started dancing again, which gives me another outlet for my stress and lets me spend time with some of my close friends.
Overall, I am optimistic that the next few months will be significantly better than the last few. I am hopeful that, now that my “semester from hell” is over, I can move on and use the lessons I learned in dealing with all the crap to make my life smoother and more relaxed.