"You Got This!"

This has been the most stressful day of my voyage. I have so much work to do and no time to do it in. I have come to the conclusion that I will be perfectly fine with getting B's this summer. It is impossible to do the amount of work we have to do with such a short amount of time, all of this traveling, frequent time changes, all sorts of epidemics being spread thoughout the ship, seasickness, etc., and have it be of great quality. I feel like I am always scrambling to get my work done, and I can never actually give it the time it needs. It's such a fine line for me to walk too because my grades are pass/fail for AU, but I still need to find the motivation to keep them from being disasterous because of grad school.

 

I just wrote two papers, one of them I actually liked a lot, and the other was quite possibly the worst paper I have ever written in my life, with maybe the exception of a paper I wrote in 10th grade about potholes. I have no idea how to write about history. I write psychology and sociology papers. Somehow in writing a paper about the medina of Marrakech I managed to talk about my feelings. We'll see how well that goes over...

 

My day was really spent mostly writing papers. I woke up, wrote papers, had a meeting with Dr. Manning, got lunch, went to Adolescence, wrote papers, went to Global Studies, and then since they were having a Q&A session, I decided my time was better spent writing papers, so I left and wrote some more papers. I took a break to shower and then went to Race, Class, and Gender, got dinner with Staci, went back to the library for 3 hours, wrote papers, went to late night snack time, and that brings me to where I am right now.

 

My meeting with Dr. Manning this morning was really good. She is my Race, Class, and Gender professor. I like her a whole lot. She gave me some pointers to help improve my writing, with specific examples, which I like. She is also letting me rewrite an assignment I got a B- on, which is awesome (except for the fact that it's adding to my work load). She told me that she is a really tough grader, so for me to be making As and Bs in her class is great. She also told me that she has really enjoyed having me in her class. That's always nice to hear.

 

Dinner with Staci was nice. It wasn't anything special, but it was nice to just hang out.

 

Remember when I talked about how Drew was doing a project with the "Love is..." cards? Well it was put up today, and it is amazing. In Tymitz Square (which is a main area where the purser's desk, the field office, and the activities desk are) it is hanging from ceiling to floor. There is a sign that says, "Love is not just one man + one woman. Our community defines love as..." and then hanging beneath is a rainbow (as all the cards were different colors) of the cards with everyone's answers. It's so cool. Drew did such a great job with it. If you don't remember, my card said "Love is...accepting yourself for who you are." I will definitely get a picture of the whole thing.

 

Tonight as I was coming back to my room, in complete and utter panic mode over all of my school work, there was a Random Acts of Kindness post-it note on my door that said, "You Got This!" It actually calmed me down, cheered me up, and gave me the boost that I needed to keep going. I don't know who wrote it, but it definitely made my day a whole lot better. I can do this. One more day of classes, review day for Global Studies, the Global Studies final exam day, other classes exam day, then the Ambassadors ball, then packing day, then Boston...Cincinnati in one week...Aurora in two...