I just dropped the writing class that I’ve had issues with this semester (and my freshman year and last summer, but I digress). My semester is looking much better, if only because I enjoy how easy my business applications class is. Doing the week’s assignments in an hour on campus? Sure, it seems futile and absurd to expect Excel and Access 2013 to apply whenever I manage to get a job that actually involves using “productivity” software (as opposed to cooking utensils, like my current job), but who knows, maybe after I graduate I’ll have an IT job with a company that’s still using a ten-year-old Microsoft Office version.

Of course, before that happens, I still have like another 60-odd hours left before I graduate.

(laugh track)

Considering the vital place the aforementioned writing class holds in the requirements and curriculum, I’m currently thinking about trying to take it this summer, or at least during a future semester (next spring?) in a “traditional” classroom setting. Online classes are more convenient (doing class work in your pajamas, while sipping fresh coffee! Doing class work at 2 AM after getting off work!), theoretically, but in practice I’m not disciplined and organized enough to work on that class at my desk in my room. It might help if I did have a better way to work on it somewhere that isn’t my desk, like if I took a laptop to Starbucks or something, but as it stands that won’t be a problem (at least until this summer or whatever).

If nothing else, I think dropping that class was better for my mental health than recurring self-loathing about feeling like a failure (which has been a problem for roughly the past five years) and wavering between stress (immediately before a deadline) and apathy (most of the time). At least in a traditional classroom, there’s more structure – sure, I have to go to campus and sit in a room for about an hour a few times a week (or, this summer, maybe more like two hours every day), but it means I would have to be more organized.

Looking forward, I need to learn to be more organized and more generally interested in my grades/classes. Historically, in college, I do best in classes that I find genuinely interesting (history, psychology, easy biology), which is all well and good except for poor study skills and apathy, which could probably summarize the reasons for my current GPA in a nutshell.

For now, at least, I’m going to be optimistic. This is helped by my having three consecutive days off this week, which started about 4 hours ago, technically. Short shifts at work are nice, as are fixing computer problems (like the graphics driver issues I was having after running some updates this weekend).