Starting secondary education is always tricky, simply because it involves learning new routines and schedules. Additional trickiness is added if you are an adult, a parent and/or running a household. In my case, the summer semester was not only when I chose to begin my jaunty skip toward academic awesomeness, it was also the beginning of my husband's deployment.
Insert my incredibly heavy sigh here.
It quickly became clear that I would not be accomplishing any serious studying or completing any significant assignments while my son was awake. No matter how many times a day I plied him with apple slices, books, markers and my iPad, he still needed ... well, parenting. Around the time he brought me a stack of books and a blanket it also became clear that I was not doing him any sort of Mommy justice by providing him with distraction tactics so that I could complete my daily scholastic grind.
Just like potty training or remembering anything aside from the names of the Backyardigans, routine seemed to be key. So I pulled out three of the five Ws, and fit them into my Ultimate Study Plan. I know it might seem odd, using the Ws. What can I say? I'm an English major and we like knowing things like who, when, where, and other things that satisfy our nosiness. And, although my routine keywords are What, When, and Where, variations of these steps which still involve feeding and bathing your kid (and yourself) and getting decent grades are, of course, acceptable.
Studying with the Ws. Drumroll, please!
What, for example, meant finding out what I needed to study. It was easy to pick a subject I preferred, but that isn't what gets the job done. Sometimes I had five pages in MLA format due and sometimes there was an impending math test. There were nights that all I did, for hours upon hours, was math. Let me be clear here: I hate math and math hates me. But at the end of the session, by choosing math I felt like I was able to hate math from an educated stance, rather than from a place of ignorance.
Learning where I could study most efficiently, believe it or not, proved to be one of my most helpful habits to develop. With a deployed husband and a toddler, the living room was the best option I had. It was quiet, but far enough away from my sleeping kid that I could turn on some music without waking him. It kept me near the coffee maker and a bathroom, allowed for all the light I needed and kept me close enough to hear if my kid started to scream the scream of a nightmare stricken (or suddenly parched) three-year-old.
When would quickly prove to simultaneously be the most difficult and important of all three Ws because this meant figuring out when I could study most effectively. I am not an early morning person and my husband was not home to allow me quiet time in the evenings. Suddenly, my evening DVR dates with reality TV were replaced with writing persuasive essays and learning how to solve for X. I was a bit sad at first, however, this habit became one of my most effective techniques for successful studying. At the end of the day, this successful studying lead to great grades which made me very, very happy. And despite the schedule changes, I always found a way to mend my relationship with Gordon Ramsey and his kitchen from Hell.
