Depending on whether you count the one multiple-choice question on which I'd worked out the correct answer, but accidentally wrote down the wrong letter, I either got thirty-one or thirty-two.

I wrote yesterday:

Sure, in theory I should have no trouble at all handling twelve credits. But that doesn't explain why I keep feeling overwhelmed every semester. Which either means that I'm just doing a bad job of things, or that maybe I ought to reconsider the reality of the situation.

See, it's like this. I do everything at the last minute. And, usually, this works. As a general rule, I run on nervous energy, and actually thrive on getting everything done once I no longer have any choice in the matter.

The problem comes when I have two projects due at the same last minute. When that happens, I am screwed. When that happens, I fall apart at the seams.

Now, while it would no doubt be a more constructive solution for me to learn to do things before the last minute, that's not going to happen so quickly. So, realistically, the key is to make sure that my courses aren't arranged so as to give me simultaneous deadlines. Ideally, I'd want to arrange matters so that I have no more than one class on any given day.

Actually, this was exactly what I did in my first two semesters. I started exclusively as an evening student, and the overwhelming majority of evening classes meet once a week, for three hours. So I had a different class every night, Monday through Thursday. And, well, it worked. On the whole, this approach definitely fit my personal work rhythms the best.

This presents the question of why I ever stopped doing things that way. And the answer is that it's not always an option. There are only so many courses that fit such a schedule, and I kept running into courses that I wanted to take that met twice a week.

So I kept convincing myself that I could manage it, that a twice-weekly class only has half the stress in any given session, rather than double the number of last minutes at which something will be due. Even though the latter is the reality of the situation.

Incidentally, having realized this, I can see a potential schedule under which I could take thirteen credits (consuming eighteen hours) next semester without collapsing, I think. If the course offerings work out the way I'd like. But I think I'm going to resist that. One semester part-time won't kill me, and I can probably use the break, and I should probably at least try it once before I dismiss the idea entirely.

But we'll see.

I don't think we're going to keep having these readings every week, which is actually a bit of a pity, 'cause they're fun. Both to perform, and to watch.

"Make sure you feel well and have had a little sleep," they said. "Give yourself an hour or so..."

Well, I started as soon as I found the article, scribbling my answers on the back of a paper plate for the next eighteen minutes, after which I went back to college to speak to my English 255 professor about his comments on my essay about Woolf. I then returned home later and continued, finishing forty-two minutes later, while simultaneously watching The Simpsons during much of that.

Hmmm, come to think of it, it did work out to an hour anyway. I hadn't done the math until now.

On the whole, it was fun: not too challenging, but having some interesting bits. Not a bad way to pass an hour. At any rate, I suppose that, whatever else happens, I can take pride in knowing that according to a highly scientific and deeply meaningful "intelligence test" in Esquire, I'm smarter than 99.9% of the population.

I hope you're catching the sarcasm directed towards the test there. Still, this leads into a number of issues I've wanted to get into in reply to things Columbine and Elaine have written, which I don't think I'll be getting to tonight. But soon, I think.