I will also never be an adult
Apr. 28th, 2013 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetY'all are familiar with this Hyperbole and a Half post, right? It's okay if you aren't; I'll still be here when you're done reading it.
Anyway, I'm currently in the midst of trying to drag myself out of a Shame Spiral.
Here's a rough outline of my responsibilities, self-imposed and otherwise:
* Self-care (I can generally go at least 50% on this most of the time)
* Attending school (I'm good on this one)
* Outside-of-class school work (This one I fail hardcore at)
* Crocheting things to sell generally (I can generally keep up with my Floppy Cat needs; other stuff is more touch-and-go and on-and-off)
* Upkeep ofhooked_on_anime, ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hooked_on_anime_gallery, and my Ravelry account (I maybe manage 20-30% of the time on this; 5% on Ravelry, at best)
* Upkeep of my Etsy shop (I'm pretty good here, actually; I just got a new pattern up recently)
* The AnimeIowa Accessibility Initiative (Maaaaaybe 50% here? This one is seriously subject to the TIWINBAA thing)
Things were going pretty well, and then Outside Of Class School Work got a major dump on it. I was really loving my major, because 95% of my work was in class in a lab setting. Even having to do quizzes and tests outside of class wasn't so bad, because I had a nice concrete deadline for those most of the time.
And then this most recent block started. Now I have a minimum of ten cakes to bake outside of class to bring in to decorate for my morning class (Beginning Cake Decorating) and frequent "readings" (can be text or videos) and daily self-assessments for my afternoon class (International Pastries) in addition to quizzes and tests on my own time. Plus, with AnimeIowa approaching, work for the Accessibility Initiative is on the rise, and even though I have a staff person to delegate work to, I still need to figure out what has to be done in the first place and what to delegate from there. On top of that, I've got at least one craft show in my immediate future, which increases the amount of crocheting I'll need to do if I want to have a good showing. Considering that cake decorating puts perhaps greater strain on my wrists than crocheting for the same amount of time, this leaves me understandably frustrated!
Not to mention that our cake decorating instructor's teaching method leaves much to be desired. ("I'm going to spend the first hour of class lecturing you on how to make an average of ten different cake decorations; I'll be demonstrating them, but not in a place everyone can see. Also, I don't plan to visit every work station to give helpful concrit to students. The second hour will be dedicated to you applying all the decorations you practiced in the first hour to a sheet of parchment paper for me to grade you on. And by "second hour", I mean fifty minutes, because class technically gets out at ten til the hour and I mean to enforce that. And by fifty minutes, I mean forty minutes, because I also intend for you to spend the first ten minutes of the second hour practicing anything you had trouble with. And you'll never find out why I graded your work the way I did, because I just write down numbers in the grade book, and never share any of the reasons why I gave you those grades." Of course, we also have days where we're dedicated to decorating one of the cakes we had to make outside of class, during which she dictates what we have to make one-thing-at-a-time rather than telling us everything the cake needs and letting us plan accordingly, which are ...somewhat less stressful to me, but still irritating. We also have a shorter lunch period, made worse because it's near impossible for a group of ~14 students to properly clean their decorating equipment in the time allotted to class.)
So yes. While I was happily coasting between the "I'm getting stuff done!" and "I'M SUCCESSFUL!" graph marks in the previous block, I am now swiftly moving closer to the bad end of the graph and paddling hard against the current. It is the opposite of fun.
Anyway, I'm currently in the midst of trying to drag myself out of a Shame Spiral.
Here's a rough outline of my responsibilities, self-imposed and otherwise:
* Self-care (I can generally go at least 50% on this most of the time)
* Attending school (I'm good on this one)
* Outside-of-class school work (This one I fail hardcore at)
* Crocheting things to sell generally (I can generally keep up with my Floppy Cat needs; other stuff is more touch-and-go and on-and-off)
* Upkeep of
hooked_on_anime, hooked_on_anime_gallery, and my Ravelry account (I maybe manage 20-30% of the time on this; 5% on Ravelry, at best)* Upkeep of my Etsy shop (I'm pretty good here, actually; I just got a new pattern up recently)
* The AnimeIowa Accessibility Initiative (Maaaaaybe 50% here? This one is seriously subject to the TIWINBAA thing)
Things were going pretty well, and then Outside Of Class School Work got a major dump on it. I was really loving my major, because 95% of my work was in class in a lab setting. Even having to do quizzes and tests outside of class wasn't so bad, because I had a nice concrete deadline for those most of the time.
And then this most recent block started. Now I have a minimum of ten cakes to bake outside of class to bring in to decorate for my morning class (Beginning Cake Decorating) and frequent "readings" (can be text or videos) and daily self-assessments for my afternoon class (International Pastries) in addition to quizzes and tests on my own time. Plus, with AnimeIowa approaching, work for the Accessibility Initiative is on the rise, and even though I have a staff person to delegate work to, I still need to figure out what has to be done in the first place and what to delegate from there. On top of that, I've got at least one craft show in my immediate future, which increases the amount of crocheting I'll need to do if I want to have a good showing. Considering that cake decorating puts perhaps greater strain on my wrists than crocheting for the same amount of time, this leaves me understandably frustrated!
Not to mention that our cake decorating instructor's teaching method leaves much to be desired. ("I'm going to spend the first hour of class lecturing you on how to make an average of ten different cake decorations; I'll be demonstrating them, but not in a place everyone can see. Also, I don't plan to visit every work station to give helpful concrit to students. The second hour will be dedicated to you applying all the decorations you practiced in the first hour to a sheet of parchment paper for me to grade you on. And by "second hour", I mean fifty minutes, because class technically gets out at ten til the hour and I mean to enforce that. And by fifty minutes, I mean forty minutes, because I also intend for you to spend the first ten minutes of the second hour practicing anything you had trouble with. And you'll never find out why I graded your work the way I did, because I just write down numbers in the grade book, and never share any of the reasons why I gave you those grades." Of course, we also have days where we're dedicated to decorating one of the cakes we had to make outside of class, during which she dictates what we have to make one-thing-at-a-time rather than telling us everything the cake needs and letting us plan accordingly, which are ...somewhat less stressful to me, but still irritating. We also have a shorter lunch period, made worse because it's near impossible for a group of ~14 students to properly clean their decorating equipment in the time allotted to class.)
So yes. While I was happily coasting between the "I'm getting stuff done!" and "I'M SUCCESSFUL!" graph marks in the previous block, I am now swiftly moving closer to the bad end of the graph and paddling hard against the current. It is the opposite of fun.
