I am now more than halfway through my first class as a graduate student. I never really thought that would be something I would ever say, but I'm proud that I can say it! It's definitely been filled with challenges, but I'm not paying money to be bored. And bored I am not! Let's hope this enthusiasm continues...at least until the end of the semester.
One of the things I am relearning is that when I get frustrated with the material, I need to let it stew for awhile. I don't want to dwell on the material and overwhelm myself, as I am usually in an overwhelmed state already, but I simply need to physically walk away from the book or the online work and just think about it. I need to let it sink in, consciously and subconsciously. Then, when I come back to it, I usually have a better grasp on what I read.
This happened to me today. Last night, I read my assigned chapter and got totally frustrated. In this unit, we are studying sociological theories of aging. The online material has been wonderful and I have really connected with it so far. Then, I started reading the chapter that was assigned to my group. Ours is about sociological theories of work and retirement. I had in my head that it was going to read like the online material. Wrong! It was mostly 15 pages of finances, business and economics with a little government policy thrown in for good measure. The language of finance is not something I am familiar with and it was very dense and foreign to me. I believe there may have been 10 sentences in the entire chapter in which I actually knew what every word meant. I really needed Google Translate!
I was in quite a state of frustration before bed last night, but I was done with the reading and let it go. Of course, I didn't sleep well....a combination of dreams and leg cramps. So by the time I got up this morning, I was far from rested. And I spent a good day at work worrying about how I was going to get through this next group assignment when I didn't have a clue what was being talked about. Still, certain words and phrases from the chapter kept infiltrating my brain throughout the day and by the time I sat down tonight to write my answers to the chapter questions, I was able to give, at least in my opinion, decent responses. Several times it actually sounded like I knew what I was talking about!
Letting the chapter soak in over a period of 24 hours allowed me to glean what information I found important from it. Whether or not it was the correct information, I still was able to do my best with my assignment. I'm happy with that progress.
That is all.
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