Test of Patience

Patience is a virtue that others have commented that I have. At times, I feel as if it is wearing thin, but all-in-all, I can normally survive and make others feel comfortable. Lately though, it's been harder. The stress of so many life changing events is starting to get to me.

Rarely do I have troubles sleeping. I'm still able to sleep straight through when I do fall asleep, but so many thoughts have been going through my head lately that it is hard to fall asleep. When this happens, I try a trick my mom told me when I was pretty little. She explained that she would tell herself stories when she was trying to sleep. The stories always involved having to hide from someone (bad guys or something) and having to be very still and quiet so they wouldn't find her. My stories are variances of this same thing and I usually fall asleep before the story gets any farther than the previous night. In this sense, I've been stuck in the same place of my current story for at least 8 months now. That sounds rather boring, but it helps to fall asleep.

In the past couple of weeks, I keep having other thoughts in my head and I forget to tell myself the story. So, my sleep is delayed each night. Unfortunately, the alarm clock still blares music at the same time each workday.

I'm overly excited about the reality of home ownership. Today, I met with the inspector and toured "my" house again. If everything goes well, it will be my house in 4 weeks exactly. Wow [full stop]. My dad was nice enough to meet me at the house for the inspection. I felt much more comfortable with him there since he understands the information much better than I do and has way more experience in fixing little things than I. There are a couple little things that need to be done in the house and I'm sure I'll have a million and a half projects lined up. But, all-in-all, this house is livable. That is important to me. Some of the others I viewed required quite a bit of work before I could even sleep there.

I'm stunned at how fast this entire process is going. Although it may seem long each day, I have to remember that there is a real possibility that I will have gone from the unknown to the preapproval to the house search to the home owning in less than 6 weeks. In fact, if everything goes right, it will be 38 days. I work for a fairly large bank and all of my co-workers are amazed at how fast this is. In many ways, this helps reduce my stress because I won't have it as long. In other ways though, it seems to drag and is probably larger than I expected.

On top of the home buying process, I have one final class left for school. In less than 6 weeks, I will be a college graduate. My last class starts on Tuesday and I still have only a vague idea of what it will entail. I have to fill out some paperwork tomorrow at work to have the class reimbursed (thankfully the Large Bank is paying most of the bills for school - nice benefit).

The last class I took was on eBusiness. It was an absolute nightmare. I managed to pull off a B+; a fact I still haven't told my dad. (That story is to come one of these days when I actually start my encyclopedia of brooksba posts.) Besides the subject matter being rather boring, I was stuck with a teacher that didn't gain my respect and a learning group that prompted me to give really nasty (in a professional way) remarks at the end of the class. There was a guy in the group who refused to participate during our forming stage and then demanded that we change the way we met at his whim. What really bothered me about the situation is that he wanted to communicate with others by using teleconferences. He rejected any ideas posted in the online forum and negatively impacted discussions. We attend an online school (in which most teachers discourage or actually don't allow teleconferences for communication) and we were taking a class on how to conduct business online! Really? Really?

It didn't help his overall score that he turned in his portion of the paper extremely late and left the compiler (not me - in fact, I was the ONLY group member to turn in my assignment on time or within 4 days of the due date) in the lurch. I helped the compiler with editing and reading through the paper and helped make the right adjustments.

In these classes, what stuns me the most, absolutely appalls me, is the lack of skill found within certain group members. I look at the classes we are in and I know how much schooling is required before reaching this point. I just do not understand how these students have made it this far in the process without learning anything. The minimum amount of classes at this school alone (assuming credits from other institutions and prior learning from high school) to be at this point of the program is something like 17 classes. In each of those, there is an individual paper due weekly and group assignments due usually 4 of the 5 weeks. That means these people have written at least 85 individual papers and contributed to 60+ group assignments. By this point, you'd think they'd have learned how to cite a source, how to use transitional statements, and how to format a paper in APA format (which has been required for every single paper). I don't even want to go into the subject of grammar or being specific in writing. It's exhausting.

So, with one class left and the amount of stress purchasing my first home added to the mix, I hope to make it through the next 6 weeks with all of my hair still on my head, all my fingernails still intact, and with my blood pressure remaining in the healthy range that it always reads.

Someone at work joked tonight that I could add more to my plate by applying for other jobs, getting promoted, and possibly trying to get married. Funny. Yeah. Marriage is not a possibility at least. I'd also have to apply for another job if I was looking to be promoted, so that's not something I'm going to add to my mix right now.

But deep down (well, and on the surface), I'm still extremely excited about this house. I'll post soon some pictures and more information about it. There are pictures on my camera of this house that my dad dubbed, "Twin Pines," today. Don't know if that will stick, but it might. There are two beautiful Norway Pines in the gigantic backyard.

I really need boxes now. I do need to start packing! The good news is that I have the first nine days of June off to be able to move most of my things. I'll also have my apartment until June 30th and be able to get really situated correctly. This helps.