Keep Thou My Feet

Something I hear all the time is, "You're so lucky to get to go to school right now. I miss being in school so much. If I could go back to school, I would really treasure the opportunity. I would work really hard to get good grades and get as much out of my classes as I could."

It's a very good point. It really is a blessing to be able to go to school, to have an opportunity to keep my mind bright and to prepare to get a good job if I were to ever need to work and to learn more about the way this earth works.

I have a hard time keeping that in mind. Honestly, I'm really tired of being in school. This is my fifth year of being in college, and by the time I'm done I will have been working on a bachelor's degree for at least seven years. I'm tired of deadlines and going to lectures and having tons of homework and readings to do all the time. I'm tired of having to put studying before having a clean house and clean laundry. I would really prefer to be simply a stay at home mom, not a mom who's trying really hard to live like a stay at home mom even though I'm actually a mom going back to school. And then I would have time to pursue other interests I have, like music and sewing and cooking and reading.

But despite my frustrations, I do still feel I need to keep going. I have some really great opportunities right now. I get to do things I never would have expected, like look at very thin slices of rocks through a microscope and learn how to identify the minerals that way. Those are things I probably couldn't learn on my own--I just don't have access to that kind of equipment. And as stressful as all the homework deadlines and tests are, I know that if I were to try to learn these things on my own time I would not move through them nearly so fast. I'm learning a lot more in a smaller amount of time than I would if I were just doing it independently. And even though I complain, I do like it. It is making me a better person, and I have felt the Spirit as I study. I will sure treasure my degree when I have finally graduated.