Finding Balance

As usual I dove into the first two weeks of school with a bit of excess.  However, the drive to get every reading and assignment done took up so much time that I found myself already making up excuses of why I couldn’t go to the gym, etc.  Knowing myself and my tendency to get a bit obsessive about school, I had to take a step back and look at my time and priorities.  School is incredibly important to me and doing well is a must, but it is not as important as my relationship with God or my family.

I examined how I could get my school work done while not letting it push my top priorities down on the list.  So I discovered on week 3 of grad school that if I read the abstract, intro, and conclusion of each article/ book chapter and then quickly scan the body of the text, I get a good understanding of the text in half of the time.  Now of course there are certain readings that I do read thoroughly all the way through. These are the ones that I have to do a project on or that are of particular interest to me, but the rest do not need a slow reading process to acquire the needed information.  With this new strategy I was able to have all of my required reading and assignments done by Saturday morning which left the weekend free to enjoy spending time with my husband!  I had a great weekend; we went to the movies, replanted the garden, went to church, the beach, and to a little party.  It was awesome and way better than spending all of the weekend doing homework.

There will be weeks when I have projects due and will have to spend some more time doing school work, but I am putting in writing that my first priority is to keep my priorities straight.  To have a balanced grad school experience where I learn a lot and my personal relationships with God and my family grow at the same time.  Everyday offers new wonderful experiences and I want to enjoy them!