Lakeland College

What am I doing?
Posted on 2/5/2011 4:28:36 PM

Hello everyone.

First things first, I'm glad to see so many of you are reading my blogs.... I see that one post has reached the 100 views mark and there are a few others that are not far behind... so thanks for that. Also, I apologize ahead of time, this post is going to be rather depressing. Hopefully getting this all written down and off my chest will make me feel better... I guess we'll see.

Secondly, this past week has been a week from hell... I hope that word is okay to say in here... I have just been feeling so down this past week, and I'm thinking that it has to do with how much stuff I've had going on lately. It may not sound like a lot to many of you, but if you know me well you know that I'm somewhat of a perfectionist and I like when I can have things planned and they work out perfectly.... well lately that hasn't been happening. I'm not sure how many of you have ever had that feeling of being useless or unimportant, but that's how I've been feeling lately.

The first thing that has been really bugging me lately is money... I'm having a really hard time paying for school and my parents are doing all they can to help me out, but the stress on its own is enough to bring me down. I've been working 10 hours a week, sometimes more if the demand for tours is high, and every dollar I earn when I get paid goes straight towards my credit card payment which is what I use to make my monthly payments for my tuition. Basically when I get paid on the 15th, by the 16th I'm already out of money and have to wait another month to get paid; that's a crappy feeling.

In addition to that, I'm applying for an internship and applying to be an RA for next year. The RA application is now turned in so that takes a little stress off my shoulders, but now I'm anxiously awaiting to hear back from them as to whether or not I got the job... and the internship started off going really well; everything was looking like I would get the internship and I was really excited, but as time goes on it's beginning to look more and more like the internship isn't going to work out. That wouldn't be so upsetting if 1) I didn't need the internship to get my Sociology degree and 2) it wasn't the exact same job that I will be doing as a career. I was planning on interning in the Child Life Practicum... and I am planning to go back to school to get my Child Life degree to be a Child Life Specialist. That experience would be perfect for me and so it's stressful realizing that it probably won't work out anymore.

The last thing that's bugging me is everything with my classes. For one of my classes there is a ridiculous amount of outside the class work and normally I'm fine with that, except for the fact that this class is pointless. It's a CORE III class called Global Conflict so the subject is very important since what happens all over the world affects us every single day, but having to do 10 hours of volunteer work, do a volunteer project, write a 12 page research paper, do news summaries every class period (you find an article relating to the region of the globe you were assigned and you write a summary of the article), host 1 press conference (lead a news conference where you basically just present the article you read to the class for 10 minutes) and write two 4 page papers in addition to that for a class that has nothing to do with my major makes me mad. For the volunteer work I am planning on going to the Boys and Girls Club of Wisconsin to help with the kids there because that would be excellent experience for my internship, but things have been progressing very slowly on their end and it's becoming more and more difficult to try and find a time when I can get hours in.

I guess overall I've just been thinking that I'm 20 years old and I really have nothing to show for it yet except an insane amount of debt, and a lot of hopes and dreams that seem to diminish more and more each day. When I think of all of the people 20 years old or younger who are in the armed services or who are playing professional sports-essentially doing something productive with their lives- I feel pretty bad. I'm really hoping that one day I wake up and say "you know what, Ben. Going to College and double majoring and then going back to school to get a degree in Child Life to become a Child Life Specialist was the best decision you've ever made.  You will change the world, one person at a time and you should be very proud of what you have accomplished." I sure hope that day comes fast.