Red pen nerd

Now that I've been to the first class for all three of my courses, I can write more about my graduate student experience.

I think I tend to over-worry, over-stress and over-analyze everything in my life, which sometimes leads to, for lack of better creative terms, "system overload". I like to keep track of everything that needs to be done, and have always been like this with my list making and planner keeping. So I decided to keep my academic life organized by marking important deadlines on a calendar. Well, after doing that for all of my classes last night, I had a small panic attack. The workload starts off fairly light with only 3 -5 deadlines for September, leading into about 8 or so for October and then exploding into 3 - 5 things due per week for November. My red pen that I was using to mark these deadlines seems to have died after being abused to mark down November deadlines. I think next semester I should use blue or purple pen instead since these colors are less associated with stress/danger and more associated with happiness/serenity.

I've decided to dive straight into these courses though and have been doing a decent job on keeping up with the readings (about 2 - 3 chapters per class per week, which are not marked with the red pen on my calendar) and have already written 2 pages of the 3 - 5 page paper due for next Tuesday's class. I've spent at least 2 hours a day reading and studying as well.

I need to remember to just breathe and relax sometimes;That I have ample amounts of time to complete the readings and get the papers and projects done. It's hard to remember that with all this red pen intimidating me though...