The Need to Be Organized

The Need to Be Organized

This week is my first full week of classes.  At the beginning of last semester, I felt a sense of overwhelm and panic.  I did not know how to organize my time.  Like many people when I can plan out a schedule and establish a routine for a continuing endeavor like school work, I can then focus and concentrate on one thing at a time.  My lovely wife suggested that I organize things with a student planner, God bless her she was right (as she normally is).  Once I started writing down everything that I needed to do in a week, I was able to establish a daily and weekly work flow and rhythm.

So, I enter a new semester and I find myself having some of the same worries.  I have been through a semester in the MLIS program now, so I now have the experience and I know how to function and organize my work.  Being in an online program the daily and weekly work flow is different than being an onsite student.  The major difference is in class participation.  Online students are required to respond to discussion questions that professor’s post on message boards.  Each message board generally is “open” for discussion and responses for one week.  It is not just a matter of responding to a question and being done with it.  We are responsible for participating in the ongoing board discussion.  This can take up an hour or two a day.

I am once again feeling that anxiety that comes at the beginning of a new semester.  I am not yet in a rhythm, and have not established a weekly work flow and this is an unsettling feeling.  Each online class has a “week”.  For my 571 class Information Retrieval the class runs Monday-Sunday, for my 650 Introduction to Archives class it runs Wednesday-Tuesday.  Last semester I divided my week into two three day sections and would do all the course work for one, before I moved on to the other.  As the semester wore on and the larger assignments where do I had to change my routine to ensure I had enough time to complete term papers. 

Last semester I did very well in my classes and got A’s in both.  I look at the classes that I have this semester, and there seems to be less “busy work” each week.  One of my classes last semester in addition to the readings had 2-4 in class assignments each week plus the online discussion questions.  So even though I will probably have a lower volume of work, I still feel scared.  I don’t feel like I am in the groove yet and hope I get back in it soon. Organization and detailed planning is a great antidote to school related anxiety.