There Are More Important Things

Getting back to school this semester proved to be a bit more tough than I expected.  In fact, tomorrow I will be finishing my 2nd week back and I still feel like I'm adjusting.  I am loving, okay maybe love is a strong word, LIKING the majority of my classes. 

But one class just wasn't clicking.  I had about 80 pages to read for the first class last week, and of those 80 pages, about 50 of them confused me.  If it had only been about 20 pages of confusing material, I would've gone back and reread it.  But 50 pages would've taken me about 2-3 hours to reread.  So I went to the first class, hoping we'd make sense of the reading.  But instead, I found myself even more confused.  It wasn't that what the professor was explaining wasn't coherent, it's that I felt like he was a person who spoke differently than me, explained things differently.  So I still was just as confused.  He is very theory driven, an economics background, and very abstract.

I went to him this week to try to figure out whether this was the right class for me.  Afterwards, I ran into a professor who I LOVE and sat and talked with her about my options.  Once I filled her in on the details, she kindly said that she didn't think it was the right teaching style for me.  It was EXACTLY what I needed to hear.  Ultimately I decided that this was not a good class for me.  The first 1/2 of the semester was going to be theory based (it's weird if you ask me since it's supposed to be a specialized ethics course), and only in the second half of the semester would we get to ethics concerns. 

So I dropped the class and picked up another class that should be a better fit.  The only problem is that now I have to catch up on the 2 classes I've missed for the new course.  It will be one busy weekend! 

Since that's settled, I am feeling so much better mentally.  It was then that I realized that first class had been really stressing me out. It's amazing to me that one little thing hanging over my head can really alter my overall mood. 

With this pregnancy, I've really been focusing on trying to stay calm and to eleviate stress in my life.  I try to have more quiet time, rest when I feel I need to, have Ian rub my back, put my feet up,  and be proactive in making decisions that cut stress out of my life.  Although I know I could've handled the challenge of the class, this pregnancy has really helped me realize that law school alone is a challenge, and it's okay to walk away from a challenge that will only bring more stress than I need. 

After all, I have more important things, actually one important person that my mind and body are focused on right now - our little one.