(no subject)

[mandolin]

I AM SO TIRED.

Note to self: never compare grad school experiences with anyone else until you finish the Master's. Because there is NOTHING more demoralizing than talking to someone who started hers a year after you did, is still working full-time, is taking a 42-credit Master's while yours is 36 and blithely talks about taking 4 class (read: 12 credit) semesters and how she'll be done in December. Nothing.

How the hell do you take a 12-credit semester and work full time without basically dumping half your work on other people? How? I want her secret.

Comments

[kahva.livejournal.com]

Doesn't sleep? That would be my guess. I've got a co-worker going for his Master's, at any given time he's trying to work his full-time job here and a part-time elsewhere, and 9 times out of 10 when he comes here to work, he's dragging and looks like he could fall asleep at the drop of a hat. And I think he's only taking one or two courses at a time. I could be wrong on that, but I really don't think he's doing more than that.

My vote goes for doesn't sleep.

[weirdweb.livejournal.com]

Last I checked she was a pretty heavy partier.

I'm going to mark it down as miscommunication (she probably meant for the year), plus the differences between an MBA and an MS. Also, for all I know she could be getting away with doing classwork at work. I don't have that luxury.

[kwsapphire.livejournal.com]

Some people are happiest when they're busting their butts 24/7. They can work full time and go to school full time and clean their house and still look well-slept and refreshed.

I am not one of these people. I tried working "full time" (32 hours) and taking 12 credits and school and had a nervous breakdown. I can't do it. This is why I haven't gone back to school and probably never will. Even if I could afford school, I can't (mentally) afford to give up that much down-time.

[weirdweb.livejournal.com]

Holy shit.

Yeah, the full time in this example is a 40-hour week. Also, last I checked, she was a pretty heavy partier. I don't know, maybe we got our wires crossed and I misheard her on the four classes thing. Maybe she meant for the year, which makes more sense. Of course, she's getting an MBA while I'm getting an MS, so maybe that's part of it? I don't know.

I'm finishing my Master's, hell yes - after this semester I'll have 24 credits under my belt, half of which my employers paid for and I don't have to reimburse them, and 9 more left to go. If I could pull it off, I'd love to just take two online courses in the fall, because that eliminates group projects and the work is heavy but manageable and quantifiable and I can break it down and do some work ahead of time (none of this "hey, pick some random paper topic on something related to the subject of this course you don't know anything about yet - OH but it has to be under 12 pages!" crap).

Honestly, looking back on it? Had I known then what I know now, I'd have gotten smart and applied for the ONLINE Master's program. Seriously. You get a better heads-up on what the course will be like beforehand so you know to double up or not. I'd have doubled last fall if I'd known Dr. C was so lazy, and word-of-mouth saved me from doubling up with Systems Design and Analysis last spring - and if I'd tried to take another course along with that one? HOO BOY. Good class, but I'd probably have wound up in the hospital from a nervous breakdown if I tried to take anything else with it. Also, the fact that it's an online course reduces the chance of group projects since a lot of the students need distance learning and there may not be any chance of face-to-face interaction.

Some of my classes have been really good. That System Design class I spent last spring pulling my hair out over? Stressful as hell, but a good class that I've caught myself applying principles from throughout the design phase of the Big Damn Project at work. And while Dr. R was sort of a flake, once he decided on his discussion grading system, Health Informatics was pretty interesting too. So is this class (Applications of Intelligent Systems), and I like the prof and thus am even madder at myself for blowing the midterm - but everything else is just piling up.

[kwsapphire.livejournal.com]

I had an online class once. It wasn't mine, it was my (now-ex)husband's. He's a lazy jerk and I didn't want him to waste (my) money, so I took the class for him. They wouldn't let me get ahead, I had to do work as it was released. Man, I hated that. I think I barely got a B. I might have even gotten a C. I was really flaking out on it because it was HIS class, but like an idiot I had paid for it for him. :P

[ecogryff.livejournal.com]

yeah, sounds like one of those people who doesn't have any other interests and is happier when they're working all the time. or doesn't sleep. or is high on uppers all the time.

[weirdweb.livejournal.com]

...that's just it. She's one of the two who are the heaviest drinkers and partiers from my old lunch group at work. Either she cut a lot of that part of her life out in the past year or we got our wires crossed.

She's also not lucky enough to be on the Ready Retirement, Application Status, User Interface Components and Bulk Filing projects simultaneously. So maybe she has time to breathe at work.

[ecogryff.livejournal.com]

yeah, that could do it.

[violetbloom.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that this person of whom you speak is pathological? Or on crack? I learned today at work that crack makes you feel like you have a lot of energy.

[weirdweb.livejournal.com]

Miscommunication, maybe? And she's a pretty heavy partier, last I checked. Also, she's getting an MBA and I'm getting an MS and there may be more chances for her to do her classwork during work hours. Who knows?

Or hey, maybe that was one of those face-to-face deceptive communication games to bolster one's superiority? (I've been reading deception research papers, don't mind me.)

[jennies.livejournal.com]

It's starting to sound like "4 Classes" was either a year-end total or a credits count, and in any case last time I checked MBAs carried (please don't harpoon me for this) a bit lighter load than MS degrees on a difficulty/coursework scale. So unless you're both taking comparable I.T. classes, even if she did mean "4 Classes a Semester", you still might be comparing apples to oranges.

And there is always the possibility that she's either got more free time to work on coursework on the job - either by way of lightweight projects, or a sympathetic supervisor with the ability to arrange workloads to accomodate her. (Said ability is nice when one has it, but getting harder to find when your department has more work than workers...)

Or she could just be one of Nature's hummingbirds. You've said she's a heavy partier, so she might just be doing all her unwinding on a booze schedule. She might also have considerably less hobbies/responsibilities (reading, rpgs, exercise, housecare, family drama) than you do. (She could also be one of those freaks what gets by on 6 hours of sleep or less. I can vouch for how much additional productivity can be squeezed from those 3-4 extra waketime hours...)


But you shouldn't beat yourself up about it either way - you know you're doing your level best to succeed (whilst maintaining a healthy portion of your sanity for later use), and at the end of the day that's all that matters. :)