As fall 2009 semester is winding down, the students stress levels are winding up.
Projects and tests are moving into the forefront of professors agendas. Not to mention that they are trying to wrap up the semesters, on target. They take the last couple weeks to cram as much information into our brains in order to “teach” us all they had planned, and have us spew it back out on a test the following week, plus everything we learned at the beginning of the semester.
Many students tend to put things off a little bit, which never helps. This is the time of the semester were people have to buckle down and focus on school, while still trying to maintain a reasonable social life, as well as their work schedule. If you work in retail, you know this is the biggest and busiest season, with Christmas coming and all.
Walking into the mall is a reminder of that. However pretty the decorations are, you always wonder, why can’t they wait until after Thanksgiving?
Though there are plenty of reasons for them to start the decorations and visits with Santa early. Ok how about waiting until after Halloween?
The decorations go up overnight anyways. There’s a thought, you never see half finished decorations in the mall. It’s not there one day, and boom! It’s all decked out the next.
So getting back to how this affects school, and the students. If you work in retail, the stores start staying open later and later the closer it gets to Christmas.
Our favorite is when the stores are open until midnight. In Grass Valley, no one is out at midnight. No one is even out past nine o’ clock. You maybe get a few people until ten, but past that, is pushing it.
So we poor associates have to stand around and do absolutely nothing. Sure we have to straighten and do go backs and make the stores look presentable for the next day.
That was done around seven thirty, and due to lack of traffic, hasn’t changed much.
In the back of your mind you find yourself thinking, there was a test that I could be preparing for, or I need to do my part of our groups power point presentation.
But no, we have to be there, in case someone wants to come shopping.
The other thing that is adding to the stress this year is planning for next year’s classes. This week they just released the new sign up dates for spring 2010. For me, the spring semester will be my last. So, of course, I submitted my graduation application last spring so I would be all set.
I wonder that if when they took in all of our graduation applications, if they knew that half of the classes we put down on the sheet wouldn’t be offered for the spring.
Sure the mock up of the schedule that was posted on My Sac State, said the classes would be offered, leading us into a false sense of security that everything would be fine and all we would have to do is sign up on our registration date.
Ah, but then we get down to our little budget crisis. Now half of the classes that are listed on my graduation application are not being offered anymore, and another one is moved to a different day.
A class being moved to a different day is a huge deal for me, because I drive in from Grass Valley every day. Well, every day I go to school that is.
It’s a bonus for me to get all my classes on two days so that I won’t have to use as much gas, and spend as much time driving.
Not to mention keep my work schedule, semi-normal.
So now, on top of projects and tests, I have to worry about if I am going to be able to get all my classes, including the substitute ones, so I can actually graduate in the spring.
This truly is the most stressful time of the year.
The writer obviously has some stress issues - she rattled off about six in rapid fire succession.
ReplyDeleteAnd she made a good stab and connecting the first graph with the last.
That said, the column needed specifics to give it some power.
For example:
'Many students tend to put things off a little bit, which never helps. This is the time of the semester were people have to buckle down and focus on school, while still trying to maintain a reasonable social life, as well as their work schedule.
Little bit? That could be the understatement of the semester.
But that aside, what does focus on school mean? What is a reasonable social life? And what about that work schedule?
How about some hours or anecdotes to put things in perspective?
Later, the writer says this:
'In Grass Valley, no one is out at midnight. No one is even out past nine o’ clock. You maybe get a few people until ten, but past that, is pushing it.'
Either no people are shopping past nine p.m. or not. The sentence contradicts itself.
Ow...
It's another case where a couple of anecdotes and specifics - drawn from the writer's experiences - could have made this stronger.
But then, this is a pretty stressful time, even to be writing columns.