Today’s big story is that I completed my registration for spring classes, and I have a monster of a semester ahead of me. I’m taking anatomy & physiology I, applied physics, composition I, and effective learning, a skills class that Austin Community College requires all students to take prior to the end of the first semester of their degree program. That’s 14 credit hours, but that’s not the brutal part.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ve got composition in the mornings and effective learning in the afternoons, finishing up my school day at 4:20. The trick is that I’ll need to leave and go straight to my wife’s office to pick her up – she gets off at 4:00 and will have been waiting for close to an hour by the time I can get there.

Mondays and Wednesdays are going to be the test of my ability as a student. Anatomy & physiology starts at 12:00, and applied physics starts at 3:00. Both classes have lecture and labs, so from noon to 5:50 I’ll have only three ten minute breaks.

The real trick is trying to figure out how to manage my time to handle that kind of a workload. The recommendation is that I spend about 40 hours a week outside of the classroom studying, and that means that a lot of things will have to be put on hold for the four months I’ll be working that schedule. I think this is going to be the most difficult semester I’m going to have throughout my degree program, and certainly will be the heaviest courseload.

I went to meet with Student Accessibility Services to arrange registration for my final class today and was told that in the 15 years that she’s sent students to take the A&P entrance exam that I took and passed on Tuesday, I’m only the second one that she’s aware of that passed that exam on their first try. I’m rather surprised at that – I thought the entrance exam was a little easier than my biology midterm, and certainly more straightforward.

Tomorrow I have no obligations, other than to work on homework, and I cannot wait to kinda stick to home. It’s been another busy week.