Where does the time go?

I know, I know...beginning each new blog with an appology is becoming a routine!

I am sitting at the bar keeping Angelines company and enjoying the fleeting feeling of freedom that comes after finals.  That's right, today were my final exams and now I have one week of "break" before the new semester begins. I say "break" because obviously I am still teaching my private classes this week.  Even so, it is a relief to not have reading or assignments hanging at the back of my mind trying to catch my attention between, class prep. and life in general.

For probably the first time in my whole four years of school here, I began to study in earnest this semester a full two weeks before my exams.  In the past I've always worked hard to get the maximum grade going into the exam and then not really worried too much about studying.  This year I decided that it wasn't worth it to loose sleep during the semester, and going into the exam with fewer than the maximum, wasn't the end of the world.  I decided I would study more and that would be that...

Changing things up worked out nicely during the semester--I wasn't nearly as worried or stressed about assignments.  If I had time to do them, I did them.  If I thought they were important to reinforce important aspects of the class, I did them.  If they were worth a lot of points, I did them; but I didn't worry about letting a few slide.  And surprisingly I found that giving myself permision to do less than 100%, actually motivated me to do more.  I didn't achieve the full points possible in any of my classes going into the exams, but out of a possible four, I had more than three in all of them.  I would say that's pretty good.  In other years, I have stressed to get those four points and sometimes only gone into the exam with the same 3.3 that I had in two of this semester's courses!

And the fact that I didn't have the full credit forced me to do some good, old-fashioned studying, which was a huge help.  It's not that I haven't studied at all in the past, but I usually just crammed in the four days leading up to the exams.  This time, I reveiwed notes, re-highlighted my texts and wrote up concept maps of each unit.  I prepared all 28 questions that one teacher gave us ahead of time to study from, and I wrote up a full lesson plan for my Didáctica de la Educación Plástica y Visual (my art class required that we write up a lesson plan in the exam aside from completing a multiple choice portion and an essay question!).

ASIDE: All this is to say that if I don't pass (or if I get anything less than a 7, let's be real!), I will be very sad.

As I was saying, the studying paid off.  In my art exam, for example, I used the full two hours for the test, but I wasn't stressed at all.  It was a great feeling.  Of course, there were some questions I wasn't sure about, but all-in-all, I was able to do each of my three exams with very little problem and next to no stress--what a concept.  I guess in the past maybe I've just been too confident in my bullsh*tting skills. ;)  Feeling prepared was a welcome change.

There's not a whole lot of other news around here.  2014 has more than begun.  I can't believe January is over already!

I'm not sure I mentioned it in my last post way back in January, but one of my New Year's Resolutions was to begin swimming again.  I am happy to say we have now gone four times. :)  Thursday was a great day in the pool.  We usually spend about 45 min in the water.  Getting to the pool takes about 25 min. and between changing clothes and showering, etc. we can't afford to be in the water much longer (depending on what time we leave home, of course).  Anyway, in 45 min, I swam a mile and it felt great--a total disconnect between mind and body.  It was like I was watching myself go back and forth across the pool: breathing and moving, the coordination came naturally.  And I didn't even feel like I was working.  My pulse must have been up, but I never got that squeezing feeling in my chest like my heart was going to come bursting out.

So despite my recent lack of blogging, I am actually feeling much more balanced than I have over the last few months.  Christmas was stressful, so January was a lot of playing catch-up and recently things have been calming down again.  Judging by the length of this blog (I could go on...), you can tell I've also been dying to get on here and write!  Now that my exams are out of the way, I think I'll be able to get back into a propper blogging routine. ;)

Cheers!