I will complete my two year programming degree in three years. I began pretty strong because I already have a bachelor’s degree and I didn’t need to take some of the prerequisites, so even though I was going part time I was still on track to graduate in two years.

I was working part time for the first year, but then transitioned to full time the second year and had to take night classes. This, paired with the increased difficulty of the third semester classes, completely killed me. I took an unofficial semester off by only taking one class but then dropping it.

I was at a crossroads. I really wanted to finish school, but I was going back in order to get a better job and the job I had at the time paid about what I wanted to be making and I thought it was stupid to kill myself trying to do both and equally stupid to quit a job when that was why I was going to school!

Well, the universe made a decision for me and I was laid off from my job. I spent some time trying to find a new one, but it dawned on me that this was the golden opportunity I required to go back and finish school.

Fortunately, I only had 5-6 classes I needed to take! Unfortunately, they were all of my programming language classes and three of them needed to be taken in different semesters.

So I only had one or two classes each semester that I needed to take. I thought I would have this utopian academic period of a year and a half where I could dedicate myself to doing all these projects I never got around to working on and learning all these things I wanted to know better, like shell scripting and regular expressions. I had all this time!

Things did not work out that way.

There is a reason my programming classes kept getting dropped when I got overwhelmed. They are HARD!

Right now I am learning Java and iOS Development. I am spending dozens of hours outside the classroom just trying to absorb the information we are having thrown at us. I used to do Pub Trivia on Monday nights with a group and I haven’t done so once this semester because I am overwhelmed by my studies.

I feel like my brain is a saturated sponge and I am trying to coax more liquid into it without having to squeeze out stuff that is already there!

Part of me wonders if I would still be this overwhelmed if I was still working, that I am making my work take up all of my free time and if I had less free time I would still do the same amount of work.

I just know it feels very disappointing to know I am supposedly doing so little, but it feels so overwhelming.