Prior to January I never bothered
to come into the room I now call my study. Sitting here, swiveling around in my
office chair, it does not feel like I have been ritualistically coming in here
and working on my ‘school work’ for only nine weeks as my first course is quickly
coming to a close. It is now so familiar that I automatically come in, plop down
and work on my module that time has seemed to fly by; these days, time is
something that I cannot out run or out work. I have been so devoted to my first
graduate course that I often feel like the character Jessie Spano from Saved by
the Bell in the episode called “Jessie’s Song”, who in the midst of a meltdown
due to juggling school in the hopes to getting into Stanford and also her
participation in a girl singing group in the hopes to getting their big break
in the 1990’s pop scene begins to take caffeine pills to stay awake enough
hours in the day to try to do it all. One of her most famous lines she cries
out, “There is no time. There’s never any time.” I can commiserate with her
plight. I find myself saying that phrase like a worn out, soon to be broken
record.
I found myself during the fifth week of MSLD
500 having my own meltdown. I was sick, which in my opinion, is not an excuse.
I felt so run down and it was right in the middle of the term when the fatigue
begins to become apparent. I found a
quote on the internet that says, “You have the same hours in the day as Beyoncé.”
It is true; everyone has the same amount of time. It is important what you
choose to do with it. I found myself struggling immensely with the actual assignments,
that even with continuous work and an all-nighter Friday night to Saturday
morning, I was still at a loss on what I was going to do and I had nothing on
my electronic sheet of paper. I missed the deadline and thought to myself, what
haven I gotten myself into? Why did I
even do this? I felt in that moment that I had ruined everything. I truly was
terrified with the thought of failure. With heightened emotions I sobbed
uncontrollably that I was going to fail the class and not turn in any more work,
receive my F grade, get placed on academic warning and not be in good standing
with the very University in which I was employed. I was afraid I was not good
enough, not smart enough to be well rounded and do all the different types of
assignments. It was a very dark few days for me while I grappled with the
reality of what was going on with me. I literally just felt stuck, paralyzed
and unable to continue forward like a dream that keeps you frozen and unmoving.
I think there is a really ugly side to success that is unattractive and often left
in the shadows. At what cost do you want
to succeed and what are you willing to do to make it happen? What do you do
when you feel like you just can’t? Is my desire to be great too much for me to
handle? Though I risk having my own mental health questioned, I think it is
really important to come forward with your personal struggles so that they do
not gain anymore traction in your life and grow into something worse. I think
that was clearly the most negative aspect of this course for me. I think I
became my own enemy and got into my own way.
I have contemplated how I might
have improved my learning experience, what more could I do or what I could have
done differently? I still do not really have an answer. I know in my heart I
tried my best and gave it my all. I have had those in my life say to me, you are
doing well; you can maybe take it down a notch. I am the type of person where I
am really all or nothing, I run at intensity level eight thousand. I feel like
I had to give it my all and be all-in each assignment so that I could create a
cushion in case I faced something I couldn’t overcome and faltered. I am also
kind of like Pac man; it brings me instant gratification to eat up as many good
grades as possible. I do feel like there were areas I had shortcomings, but
while I think it is good to identify problems, I am not one to dwell and fixate
on them, either. When I think about what the University or my instructor could
do to further support my learning, I really feel satisfied with my overall experience,
the problem I dealt with was based on something I did not feel competent with and not a reflection
on anyone but myself. A small critique would be that in an ideal situation,
assignment updates and changes in a module would be beneficial prior to the beginning
the new term or if that was not possible, prior to the beginning of that week’s
module.
While everything in this life is
not always sunshine and happiness and that has been acknowledged, there were
some truly lovely moments that are important and positive that need to be
praised. I earlier mentioned that I asked myself why I am doing this and why
would I want to and the reason is because well, there are many reasons. Always one
to self-reflect, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life
about ten years ago. What is my life’s purpose, its mission? What I came up
with is what I wanted my life’s impression to be. I want to be happy and I want
to make others happy. If I have the opportunity, I would like to make the day
better for those who encounter me. I never want to be the bad part of someone
else’s day, or at least without unavoidable reason. With that comes social
responsibility and awareness. I have witnessed social injustice in corporate
environments. I have been a victim of it and I have seen others have to deal
with it. There are certain things that I will never agree with and will not tow
the company line if I ever make my way up to creating policies if it does not
include valuing others. I want to become a force to be reckoned with and a
force for good. That is not exactly specific to a field or a profession, I
know, but that is what would make my life meaningful to me and that cannot be
accomplished without leadership. I feel that this course set the foundation to
learn more about leadership and that each of the topics have purpose. I cannot
say that something is irrelevant, because I do not feel like we know what will
be relevant when the journey of life is completely unknown. It is best to learn
as much as possible to have the tools for the times when you need them and
least expect it.
I learned a lot to be successful
in future classes because there was a little of everything covered all in one
class. I had no clue how to do APA format prior to this class. I didn’t know
what critical thinking was and I had never blogged. One of the most positive
aspects to me was connecting with something I love and have longed to do more
of and that is writing, especially creative writing. It is still on the back
burner as I am not completely sold on the possible success of my current
abilities, but deep in my heart I long to call myself a published author.
Blogging gives me the practice I was not giving myself before I began this
program. Even if I never take the step to become an actual novelist, writing is
always incorporated throughout the business world and can still something I am
satisfied doing in any capacity that I find myself able to do it. Ultimately, I
know that I need to grow myself through this leadership program to take myself
to the next level of wherever it is that I am heading. I am not sure what to really expect with the
future courses in the leadership program. I am apprehensive about what I might
face, but I am also excited about what I might gain.
Oh, there is something I thought
of and one last thing I would like to conclude with in my course reflections. I
really enjoyed my instructor and think that if the University and my instructor
really want to support my learning experience, she would most definitely
instruct other MSLD courses because that would make me really happy, so I
strongly suggest that happening… pretty please? Let’s make this happen!
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