there was a young woman from boobville ...

I just figured I'd give a quick head-up for anybody wondering what the current status of my schoolwork is:

... uh.

*quietly freaks*

1. I have to make the same speech last ten minutes in one class and less than seven in another next weekend. (I need to do an informative speech in my speech class and a ten-minute Powerpoint presentation in my IT class, so I might as well just do the same one for both. I'm tentatively doing it on the seriousness of depression and how it's not just "being sad.")

2. If I play my cards right, the only thing I'll be doing on finals weekend is coming in to give a short speech on the service learning project (i.e., five hours of volunteer work) I'm supposed to do between now and then. (Don't ask me when I'm supposed to squeeze it in. Your guess is as good as mine.) If I get 119.5 points out of the 140 points from my take-home test this past weekend and the homework I'll have next weekend, I'll be able to skip the algebra final (well, if I'm doing the math right anyway), and my IT final is open-book and online.

3. The semester's almost done?! But it just started! :(

I was going to take classes during the summer sessions, but I decided against it because I don't want to overwhelm myself, and because I won't have the money for it anyway, and because I don't want to be trying to worm my writing time around my school time for much longer, especially if the Mystery Option Behind Door Number Three doesn't work out and I end up doing the self-publishing thing.

So I have a break until the fall, at which point it appears -- after registration opened up today and I looked through everything that was available -- that I'll be taking College Math 111 (meh, more math), College Writing 102: Writing About Literature (woohoo!), and Great Themes In Literature: Isolation and Alienation (which appears to be the only thing available during that schedule that can go towards my major).

I'll be completely unsurprised if I have to drop that last one before fall semester, because it doesn't list ENGL 102 as a prerequisite and you'd think it would. That said, if it doesn't, I'd be stupid not to take it -- I have to take a bunch of lit electives anyway, that one is a theme I really like, and it's right after ENGL 102 with the same professor in the classroom right across the hall. Heh.

Ugh, somebody else come fill out financial aid forms and college loan applications and whatnot. *headdesk*

You know what it is? It's that doing all this makes me see myself in debt up to my ears all over again. Not that I'm not already in debt up to my ears, but ... well, you know. I think part of it is that the last two times I tried the college thing -- the first time when I cracked and flunked out and had what was probably a bit of a nervous breakdown over the whole thing, and the second time when I discovered just what a mess my college loan history really was -- I was trying to be very, very sensible about my majors and I picked stuff I figured would be of use. The first time I picked journalism, the second time I was going to try for something in IT.

This time ... fuck it, if I'm going back I'm going for a communications major with a concentration on writing. Creative writing, at that.

Is it sensible? Fuck, no. Will it make me happier having a degree in something I dearly love, regardless of the fact that getting published is so damn hard and I've been having miniature bouts of paranoia the past few months that I'm never, ever, EVER going to be published and I might as well give up and devote myself fully to the inbound call center industry? Hell, yes, it'll make me happier. Broke, but happier.

That said, the financial aid industry can go fuck itself sideways with a rusty chainsaw, honestly. There should be more people who will just fill out this stuff for students who see numbers attached to dollar signs and run away screaming.

With that in mind, I found a college tag. So I've got that accomplished, I suppose.