Last Day of Freedom

Today, I am a walking, talking contradiction.  I am ready to start class, yet not ready to deal with it all.  I wanted to completely enjoy my last day of freedom, yet couldn't resist putting an hour or so in to stuff for school.  I am looking forward to and dreading tomorrow.

I suppose it's not all that uncommon a feeling for the last day of break.  I'm done lazing around, doing nothing but working at Subway and occasionally meeting up with my friends on the rare occasions our schedules didn't clash.  I'm tired of spending all my time in Kapolei, doing nothing, or Aiea, working.  I'm ready to spend some time in the city and not just a few hours ever couple of weeks.  I'm even ready to start riding the bus again and not feel like I need to drive everywhere.
At the same time, I am not looking forward to the endless balancing act again: school-work-social life in that order.  I have five 300- and 400- level classes this semester: four English and a History.  That's going to be a lot of time spent out of class on reading alone, without even thinking about papers and other assignments.  And then I was just promoted to Night Shift Leader at Subway, which according to my manager means basically squat in the new responsibilities area and $0.50 in the wage area.  But it also means I'm going to be ending my halfhearted job hunt for something better, at least for a while.  Which means I'll continue to work at somewhere that's halfway between work and school and inconvenient if I'm coming from either direction.  And finally, for the first time in my life since high school, I have an active social life.  I have friends and we do things like watch movies and get pedicures and go on hikes and hang out at the beach.  I'm even an (honorary) auntie now to little baby Jayden (who is 8 days old today).  I most certainly don't want that to suffer because that is one of the few things keeping me something that resembles sane.  I had a hard enough time keeping that up this summer, though, when I was only balancing work and a life.  Will it even be possible once I throw school in on top of everything else?  Or will it be easier since most of my friends are college students and will therefore be cutting back on work in favor of school?  Either way, I am going to have to have some amazing time-management skills if I want to get through this semester.  Help?

Technically, the term started today, but since I only have classes Tuesday and Thursday, I had one more day of reedom to enjoy: so enjoy it I did.  I met my friend Amy for lunch at Ala Moana and ate a huge burger.  From there I rushed off to school to pick up my friend Ashley for a day of window-shopping and pedicures as a late birthday celebration.  The window-shopping turned into a bit of real shopping when Ashley found a cute green pencil box in Sanrio (I've been looking for one casually for almost a month now) and I found three volumes of Cipher I needed at a Book-Off (and it was hard to tell myself know since I've been so stingy with the book money lately).  And of course, I had to pay for Ashley's favorite "girl's day out" activity: the pedi.  My toe-nails are now Green Bay Green in honor of the best season of the year; luckily I was wearing my I (heart) Packer Football shirt and was able to hold up the greens to pick out the best fit.  Ashley's decided I am not allowed to get green or purple next time, but it's not like she has any say over what color I paint my toenails.  Besides, those two colors match my wardrobe best.  And finally, we finished off our day with some (overpriced) chocolate-covered strawberries from Godiva.  Still, I stayed amazingly close to the budget I set for myself despite my unplanned purchases. 

And then I got home and instead of enjoying my last few hours of light responsibilities, I spent probably at least an hour online, going over the syllabus and doing the first reading for my online class: Multicultural Lit.  I haven't responded or done anything else, but I've thoroughly read anything I could find and participated in such mundane organizational tasks such as split the book-list into "Need Immediately" and "Can Wait on Amazon" and making a list of important dates.  It was the sort of thing many would consider "busy work" but I consider essential if I want to survive this semester with even a bit of organization and efficiency.  If I don't start off on the right foot, I'm doomed to always be playing catch-up.  I've learned that the hard way more than once.

Another very important tool of survival I'll need is sleep.  And since I now have to get up in less than 7 hours, I think it's time I ended this reflection and work on that.
Signing off!