To be honest, things got difficult for me recently. I deployed to Japan a few days ago & did not
complete a few assignments which set me back, but I am here and ready to go. The difficult part for
me now is developing a suitable routine in this new chapter in my life--let me explain.
First and foremost, my sleep schedule has now drastically changed, 17 hours ahead to be exact.
Granted, it only really affected me for the first two days, but I cannot say that I am at 100%.
Secondly, I am now during establishing a new routine. With a different work schedule and different
methods of completing tasks, I must now find the most suitable methods of completion. Lastly, I am
now combating a lack of motivation to complete these tasks. The act of 'Figuring things out' takes a
lot out of you, I must admit. To end this gripe session on a better note, I will say that I am making
progress. The more I do, the more I accomplish, so I must keep moving. My objective is to do a little
bit of each of the things that I have to do, and slowly increase time spent doing it. I have a few
challenges that I am learning to overcome in this class so far. One example is analysing music and
literature. I must read and listen so many times that I get discouraged. Something that helps me is
stop rushing and really sit and think about what I am looking at or listening to. A second example is
distractions from the outside world. I work full time, a mother of 3, so I am kind of busy. To help
organize myself and give myself ample time to study and get my work done, I must take myself out
of mom/businesswoman mode and turn into student mode. It is hard but time management is key
for me to success in this class.
So far, the most challenging part of the course was trying to understand some of the art that was
featured in last week’s module. Also, finding the time to complete all my work can be a bit
challenging, but putting my mind to it and more effectively budgeting my time has worked well so
far. To overcome the challenge of interpreting art, I just made sure to take adequate time to make
sure I had a grasp on things. that extra time helped to improve my understanding.
So, this week I feel like the biggest challenge I had would have been balancing the workload with
my schedule. The job I work at is overly exhausting and that makes it harder to concentrate on
other things. I sometimes feel so lost trying to navigate through the heartache and physical demand
that working the at the hospital that I let other things slip. I have a few meditation activities that
help with the stress. I have been trying to do the one day at a time for the rest of the stress. I work
such long nights that I rarely see family when I am working so my support system gets a little thin
during the work week. I suppose that I need to remind myself that I do not have to be perfect just
do what I can when I can. I know that I can do this, and I will keep pushing because I need to follow
my path.
I would not say that I have found the class to be challenging thus far, at least not the assignments to
this point. c The only thing that makes it difficult has more to do with me just finding the time to do
said assignments. c The job I have has weird, fluctuating hours and a lot of times I end up brining my
work home with me because things get hectic up at work as well. To try and avoid being rushed or
finding the best times to do the assignments, I have found that starting immediately when the week
starts or even working ahead once I am done with the previous week’s assignments, usually keeps
me in a decent place to get things done on time. c Honestly, nothing about this class itself has been
challenging; however, work and life things have been a big issue the last couple weeks that tends to
take away from my time for homework. We have been working lots of extra hours at the Post Office
due to short staffing from COVID, along with being extra tired by the time I get home and needing
to sleep before the next long day. Honestly, homework has been one of my lower priorities the last
couple weeks. I have yet to overcome this challenge fully, but taking a minute every day to remind
myself how much my education means to me has helped give me the motivation even when tried to
work on homework for at least an hour or two. I am hoping the stress and overtime from work will
calm down soon so I can focus more on what is important to my future. I would have to say the
most challenging thing about getting through this course is trying to understand the work within the
web-text. I will be reading the chapters and comprehending what is being said, turn to whichever
piece of art we are focused on during the module and, completely lose all understanding of what is
happening. At times I will feel confident in my answers, and then when I hit submit, my answers are
completely different than what the preferred answer is, and I feel a lot less of myself. What is
helping me to slowly begin tackling this issue is by re-reading the text. Even if this means re-reading
it two or three times, going slower each time, notetaking and writing down vocabulary I have never
seen before, just to make sure I am understanding everything in front of me. It can often be
exceedingly hard for me to concentrate when doing many things, and class work is no exemption. It
has been a challenge keeping track, because I tend to clutter my mind and my workspace, which
ultimately stresses me out. Simply not giving up has helped me to work on overcoming this
challenge. I have started to work on my organization skills, and though I may have a long road
ahead of me, I will not give up. I know ultimately it will pay off in the end when I learn to create an
organized environment around me. c c c
The hardest thing for me throughout this course so far has been the visual arts. I am not an artistic
person so I never really got into art. I am trying hard to get into it through the reading and
assignments we have but it is just not interesting to me. So, to this day I am still trying to find a way
to overcome that. So far in this course, I have found my biggest challenge to be time management. I
love the course material but finding the time to sit down and receive the information has been a bit
challenging. I work full time at AAA towing overnight and part time at another company on my days
off from AAA. Regardless, I have seemed to figure out a way to get it done and that is all that
matters! I have been trying to get my schedule with work nailed down more definitively so that I
can get a school schedule set up that works with work. Once I get into the groove of things it will be
much easier to find the time to get things done. I have had two challenges so far in the course,
including sickness and difficulty perceiving the musical portion of our work. For the past month, I
have been recovering from COVID, which takes a toll on my daily activities by inducing chronic
migraines and draining my energy. Thankfully, I am starting to recover and have managed my illness
and schoolwork by listening to my body when it needs nutrients, rest, and working during the times
I have the most energy. As for challenges within the course, I struggle with the musical aspects due
to not understanding elements of music, even when going through and re-reading the previous
chapter a multitude of times. I have not overcome this challenge, but possible solutions are looking
into third-party explanations and reaching out to others for more information.
I am having a hard time getting through the reading part solely because I am not intrigued by some
parts of the text. I find myself trying to do it while I am at work and when I finally get home and I
end up falling asleep. This is because I work 12hour days though not because of the reading. I am
trying to do better with time management and compartmentalization but, I do not think anything I
am doing is working. I am really winging it. I believe after this upcoming week I will be on a better
track. c c I hope this does not come across the wrong way however I feel that this question is a bit
premature as we are only in our second week, and while things may be more challenging for others,
I have yet to find anything super challenging that I would consider worthy of writing about. For the
sake of this post, I will reflect on the last module and found that the literature part of our
assignment was the most challenging as it used examples that were written in Old English and then
went on to ask us as students what we thought the meaning was and what our feelings were. For
me, I have always had a hard time understanding Old English.... (Forget it Shakespeare!) With that
in mind, I found that by breaking it down sentence by sentence (and using the great and wonderful
Google) as an aid to help me dumb down and make sense of what I have just read
