Hello Cortisol! How've you been old friend--

This week has been a busy one.

The first week of school was very, VERY stressful.  I kept imagining the images and diagrams from my psych book last year that showed a brain flooded with cortisol; the stress hormone.  I was feeling the flood quite regularly....

I have 7 classes.  SEVEN CLASSES!!!!! That's the number of classes that I took ALL OF LAST YEAR!!!!  What was I thinking?

I attend school a 3 hr block each day monday through Friday.  I work at the elementary school for an hour and a half, then have 30 minutes to get to school which is very doable. Except when your car won't start....

Most days I have one class that takes the entire 3 hr block.  Tuesday is the only exception, that day i have one 2 hour class and then a one hour class.  I also have one online class.  They total 16 credits.
The teachers all seem pretty nice.  I am with the same group of people in all my classes.  It's called a "cohort".  We're getting pretty comfortable with each other.

Theres one girl who is very outspoken and goes for every one-liner possibility that opens up and sometimes she's very funny and sometimes she's very obnoxious.  We have one poor man in our group.  He is a bit on the quiet side.  The loud girl keeps calling him our token male.  I am finding it a bit overdone.  It was funny the first time but I think she makes him very uncomfortable.  She has even started calling him JT.  His name is James but he's been helping some of the teachers with the smartboards because he's tech savvy, so she said we should call him James Techy and then started calling him JT.  All. The. Time.

I have started feeling overprotective of James and have tried to work out how to approach obnoxious girl.... Let's call her OG to say "HEY.... Just Lay off James. He's a real person. He has a name- he doesn't need you to give him a new one. Leave him alone.  "

I think it's because I know what it's like to feel uncomfortable with attention you're not asking for in a group like that and would HATE it if someone was doing that to me.  He's a man and he's an elementary education major and he's a person.  Let's quit objectifying him for entertainment...

I'm not his mom though... so I guess I'll have to let him fight his own battles.  OG is a "nontraditional" student like myself.  Isn't nontraditional student a nice term for middle aged student????!!!
I think she could be a lot of fun if she toned it down a little.  I really don't want to be paired with her for a group project though, she'd overwhelm me.  There are 4 of us "nontraditional" students over 40 and a few more that are probably in early 30's with a couple kids and then the rest are what you'd expect; 20something college girls.  I think there's about 30 in our cohort

I heard from so many people and from some of my experiences last year in classes that you should wait until you attend class to buy your books because sometimes they tell you that you can buy older editions, they decided not to use certain books, etc..   So that is the approach I took.

It's a fine line between trying to be $ smart and waiting too long!  I went to Ed. Psych class monday and that night checked amazon and a few other rental places to check on the book i was going to need for that class and other classes.  It was on Amazon for $110.  I went to 2 classes on Tuesday and was thrilled I had waited because the 2 books listed on UVU's booklist she wasn't using and the only book she was using was NOT on the list... GEEZ!

I was meeting with a girl after school who had advertised on KSL to buy some books from her.  I bought one for $10, for my Friday class, that was a 4th edition, when syllabus said 6th ed. I figured $10 was a good risk and she swore she used the book last semester with the same teacher I would be having and that teacher didn't care.  The other book she had was musty and had those black moldy patches. she was selling it for $30 and had paid $40 for it last year.  The book was going for $80ish online but I had seen it to rent monday night for $25 from Chegg.  I decided I didn't think I could stand the smell so declined on that one.

I came home to check on books again and saw that the one I was planning to buy from amazon was now up to $155 and the rental from Chegg was now $38 to rent.  WHAT?????!!!! not even 24 hrs later????? I panicked and spent a couple hours surfing the web looking for books and researching all my classes and what they said to buy.  I decided prices were only going up at this point and started buying.  On a stroke of luck   I was blessed to find the $155 Ed Psych book for $85 on ABebooks, a site my friend recommended.  There was only one and b/c there is a 30 day guarantee, I went for it.  The description said shrinkwrapped, brand new.  We'll see....

I spent $210 on books that my friend who went to UVU bookstore spent $500 on so I felt pretty good about that UNTIL I went to class Wednesday and the teacher announced that because the UVU bookstore was short on his book and didnt' know if they could get anymore, he would not be requiring the book and would use other resources...   That was my cheapest book purchase at $8.50 including shipping so.... not a huge loss but still... I'd rather have that $8.50 in my pocket.

Monday, my car wouldn't start when I left for work and I was supposed to get there early to finish lesson plans... A wonderful friend who I can always call at a moment's notice, drove me to the FedEx terminal to pick up Mark's car.  I didn't' get to work early... I was racing to get my lesson plans done.  It was a stressful way to start the day.  I was asking myself WHY WHY WHY TODAY WHY WHY!!!???? and then I realized that it happening today WAS a blessing as we had gone to Southern Utah on Thursday night and come home Saturday night.  What if it had happened on our vacation weekend.  That would have been a drag to be stuck at a gas station in Fillmore.  Okay Lord.  Thank you for waiting til Monday when my friend was there to bail me out!

Mark charged the battery Monday night and the car was working fine.  I left for work Tuesday morning without a hitch but-- when I left work and went to the parking lot with class starting in less than 30 min.... AGAIN, my car wouldn't start.  This time I called a classmate from my cohort, who I also had in my two summer classes.  She has become a good friend and was happy to swing by and pick me up on her way,  so crisis averted.

Tuesday night amid soccer practice and book buying and fixing the car battery.... I had a meltdown- complete with tears and hyperventilating and professing to Mark that I ABSOLUTELY could not do this-  It was too hard.  He kept telling me that was what I thought when I started Math and I did fine and I was going to do fine with this too.  After completing the first week of classes, I am feeling a little calmer but still very overwhelmed with the amount of homework and reading and the things it feels like i'm supposed to know that I don't know.   And then there's the guilt and the worry that I'm not taking care of my family the way that I should.

One day at a time.  Deep breath. I suppose the only thing to do at this point is to

                                          

So if you talk to me and I babble nonsensically or you see me and you notice that I only remembered to put eyeliner and mascara on one eye and my hair is sticking up or my shirt is on backwards.... Now you know why.