This is my first week back in college and although i haven’t started in to any serious work yet, i’m definitely feeling more tired and drained than usual…
At the minute, my concentration is 100%. I’ve yet to get distracted or lose focus on anything any lecture has said. But come the evening time and after the 50 minute drive home, i’m definitely more tired than i have been all summer.
I think it’s a combination of travelling so for long (when i’m not used to it) and the evenings getting darker earlier. It all seems to have happened so quickly. It’s as if it’s the middle of winter. I’m still working away on my own projects when i get home but after the first few weeks i know i’ll have to ease off my own projects if i’m to do well this year.
And as i get to know more about the subjects, i get more and more confident i can do well. Better than last year. A lot better. Up until now, i’ve almost been ‘held back’ by hands on work… practical experience is always nice but i’m probably not as sharp at that as i am at reading and writing. Research and reports probably suit me better and from what little info i’ve got on my subjects so far, it looks like i’ll be getting plenty of that this year.
Whilst that may be ‘easier’ for me to do well in, it’s definitely not easier in terms of workload and hours invested. With practical work, you show up and learn as you go along. Relatively simple, not much ‘homework’ in terms of research and investigation. With any kind of writing, you can’t just write as you think, well at least most of us can’t. Every blog post here takes about 1 hour to complete but don’t forget i do this daily, and i regard it as ‘habit’ so i’m probably much sharper than a lot of people when it comes to putting pen to paper. What goes down on the paper may not be of any greater or any less quality than someone who never write but the point i’m trying to make is that writing comes naturally to me now whereas for a lot of people the only writing they ever do is forced – i.e. they have to answer questions or write reports etc… i do it out of ‘love’.
So this year won’t be any less work and will actually require more time and energy from me but the difference is most of it involves writing rather than hands on work. A couple of weeks ago i decided to stop working on all projects bar theleavingcert.com and that’s the way it’ll continue… i just won’t have the time to do anything else and i need to allow myself a bit of extra time this year to bump my marks up by 5-10%.
Feeling drained on day 2 isn’t good 🙂 but all i’ll say is that i set a new years goal in January to blog every day in 2010. Two days later, that was broken. Since then, (9 months on) i haven’t missed a single day. So although i may be tired and drained it’s not in my character to let that effect me. This is my biggest year yet in education and i’m determined to peak at the right time. Tiredness won’t stand in the way…