Time Management

I am officially having difficulty. How did I do it all before? Not only it all, more?? Before I went away, I was doing a lot more than I am doing now... I had the same number of classes, I had the same job, I had the same chronic illness that can slow me down at times, but I maintained a fellowship, I spent more time with friends, I watched far more television, and somehow I seemed to get it all done with a decent night's sleep.

Last night, I was up until 2 a.m. finishing a short paper for a class. I absolutely know what I'm doing. I am not feeling as if I am struggling in school or with the materials (as I did when I first came back to school and needed to learn what APA citation looked like and basic going back to school issues). Now, though, I feel as if I have not figured out my time management, yet. I'm nearly a month into school, so I better get my act together. What I hate most, is that I am finding myself settling down to write here, and falling asleep before I can even get a sentence written. Now, that is a problem. So, I am going to try and write earlier in the day.

I am continuing to find that my interest in the women's pathways to crime framework is where I want to focus my research. So far, most things I read seem to say that white collar female offenders are not influenced by similar motivations as other offenders that fall under the pathways framework (earlier victimization/trauma). However, based on so many stories I heard, I think, perhaps, the wrong questions may have been asked. I think there is a similar pathway to crime for financial related crimes and I'm excited that I already know where my research may be headed (two years into my former PhD program and I was never too specific).

In fact, I think I now have two professors for my "thesis" committee, as I walked into a second professors office during her office hours this week. She at first was a little standoffish, and by the end of our conversation, she was offering me a chair in her office and saying that "if" I am in as an official PhD student, she would like to work with me as a student. Sweet! She actually did a really interesting dissertation topic (just a couple years ago) that falls close to my interests! I still need to select my thesis chair, but not yet...

I have two group projects and am trying to shuffle our meeting times. I love collaborative projects, but they often take more time to complete than working independently. I feel as if I have great groups, though. They are all new graduate students and in that scared deer in headlights mode, so they are working very hard. They do look to me for guidance, as I know the ins and outs of my University and the how to's better, but ultimately, we are all working well as teams. As a master's level vs a PhD level student, there is much more "busy" work, and a lot less theoretical work, discussion, and reading. I am not upset that the professors did not want me in their PhD courses, they did not yet admit me into the PhD program, and I am learning a lot about the building blocks of what I need to know. I just keep getting ahead of myself and trying to take things to the next level and then remembering that I am not there yet. Maybe, if I could just be where I am, I could slow down enough to get everything done...

In the end, I know that everything will be okay. In fact, I know that everything doesn't even need to work out the way I am planning on it to. There are so many ways my life may go at this point and my life is sooooo good. I don't gamble. I'm not locked up. I am mailing off a check to pay a bit of my restitution. I'm visiting my home town in a couple weeks.

So, I guess it's okay that I don't have everything all together. I have people to respond to. I have to get my room fully organized (still). I need to figure out the best studying place in my home (still). I apologize to all of you for not being the daily writer I've become, though, and I will do my best to be better, because I still have much to share and I hope you still choose to want to be a part of this exchange. It's a day at a time, and so for today, I wrote this. See, I'm already doing better with my time management!