Everyone needs to clean their desk. Well, not everyone. Not the super-organized neat freaks. I used to be a super-organized neat freak, but then I started doing stuff and it keeps me from doing other stuff, like cleaning my desk.

My desk isn’t bad, though. I mean, I’ve seen worse. I can see the black wood underneath. I have space to put things still. The top shelf is actually mostly bare—nothing but a fuzzy stuffed owl, a notebook, and a picture of Marilyn Monroe that I’ve had for two years but haven’t actually hung on the wall yet. She’s biting her nails and looking sexy. How can she look sexy when She’s biting her nails? When I bite my nails, I look like I’ve had too much caffeine?evidence of which can also be seen in the graveyard of empty Diet Coke cans shoved behind my computer in a vain attempt to hide my addiction from the rest of the world. they’re messy, but it doesn’t count because you can’t see them, unless I put my laptop lid down.

Addiction number two? Popsicles. Yes, I know It’s a bazillion degrees below zero. Yes, I know that this habit makes me so cold that I have to drape myself in blankets (currently heaped on the floor because I’m not eating popsicles and am therefore at a comfortable temperature). Yes, I know that I don’t eat popsicles in the summer, which is horrendously inconsistent.

But still.

Don’t they make a mess? Not really; in fact, that big red drip over there is not from popsicles at all. It’s nail polish. Let me explain. I got stuck on a piece I was working on and had the crazy idea to repair the one finger whose French mani had worn off. Red was the obvious choice because there was a bottle of red polish already sitting on my desk (I still haven’t figured out why). I thought it would look cool and sophisticated. It didn’t. Next time I’ll let a professional do the job—I’ll stick to eating popsicles.

So the nail polish drip is on the desk, as is the bottle of polish responsible for it. Also on my desk: boring, common things. Receipts. Editing books. My planner. The mouse. Four pencils, because I never can find the one That’s already sitting out. Post-Its. Bills. A hat. Why a hat? Maybe for when I get cold next time I eat popsicles? Come to think of it, that makes perfect sense. The hat stays.

Kleenex. A tiny blown-glass vase. The Roget’s Thesaurus I got for Christmas when I was eleven. A Bluetooth headset I bought three phones ago and still haven’t taken out of the package. I think I’m worried it won’t work with my current phone, and then I’ll feel guilty for buying it and not using it while I could. Not knowing the truth allows me to feel good about myself and my responsible use of the electronics budget.

On the other hand, I do feel badly that I’ve never opened it. My smartphone is right here on the desk next to me. I could try it. I want to try it. I made a vow to get rid of as much stuff as possible this spring, so I might feel good even if I have to give it to Goodwill.

The directions are missing.

Maybe in the pile of papers on the filing cabinet next to the desk?

I really need to clean the pile of papers on the filing cabinet next to the desk …

Things were going well; out-of-my-mind busy, but well. The house wasn’t particularly clean, but full-time work and part-time school, coupled with family and volunteer commitments, meant that something had to slide. Work was moving along, and for the first time ever I’d become really excited about my studies. I’d narrowed my focus, selected more challenging courses, and added another class to my course load. I was ready. I could handle it.

And then.

Then came the crisis.

My son, who has special needs and whose emotional and behavioral issues had always caused tension at home, at school, and on the playground, was abruptly dismissed from his school. They were unwilling to accommodate his needs; he was disruptive; and to be honest, he wasn’t learning anything. It was time to begin the process of creating an individualized education plan with a new school, one that hopefully would accept him, embrace him, and want to help him. In the meantime, on top of work, school, and the emotional exhaustion that accompanies raising a child with special needs, I would need to homeschool him until we could find a permanent school placement for him.

Wrecks

As you move along on your educational journey, chances are you’ll run into some obstacles. When It’s something small?a nasty bout of the flu that derails your schedule, or a big work project that eats into your study time?it can be incredibly frustrating to navigate around it. But sometimes these ?bumps on the road? are more like full-on wrecks: windshield smashed, bumper twisted, maybe even flames flickering out from under the hood. When It’s a question of something serious, like divorce, death in the family, financial crisis, or an issue with a child, It’s hard enough to figure out how to deal with the problem itself, let alone things like work, education, and other commitments.

In a time of crisis, studying from home has its advantages. It does allow for a more flexible schedule; it does mean a certain freedom to shift priorities and lifestyle. But it also means that figuring out where everything stands is a bit more confusing.

In this series of articles, we’ll take a look at some coping strategies that may help you navigate your way through the crisis and safely to the other side.

don’t Prioritize, Organize

When we meet with an obstacle, we’re traditionally urged to redefine our goals, at least temporarily; in other words, to prioritize, to decide what’s important and what’s not.

Often the perception is that the crisis takes precedence over everything else. And in a way, it does; I have to teach my child right now. I must come up with the paperwork to get him the help he needs. He requires weekly therapy and at-home intervention. But so often the emphasis on prioritization is taken to mean that everything else should go by the wayside.

That’s dangerous thinking. ?Prioritize? doesn’t necessarily mean letting go of your dreams and commitments in favour of that nebulous notion of ?more important.? Nor does it mean pretending that your pre-existing commitments don’t matter. In fact, doing so can drastically increase your stress levels, not to mention prolong the emotional and physical damage to yourself, since you’ll have to deal with catching up with the mess later, after the more immediate problems are resolved or stabilized.

Instead of trying to prioritize, organize. Start out by writing a list of everything going on in your life: the big stuff, like work, school, and of course anything referring to the crisis, but also smaller commitments (cleaning the bathrooms, doing the banking, grocery shopping) and regular practices and habits (weekly yoga class, calling your mom, curling up with a novel). Make it a major brainstorming session. Enlist your partner, friends, and kids: what do I need to do? What do I like to do? Whether It’s important or not, write it down.

But now what? What if everything is important? don’t the dishes have to get done eventually? What about those clients? Who’s going to take care of my kids while I get caught up in my history class? And how do I explain all this to the people to whom I have commitments?

Once you’ve got that list in place, you can move forward with the next step in organizing. In next week’s article, we’ll take a look at a better way of prioritizing and discuss why you can and should ask for help?and where you should be looking.

Originally published on Feb 8 (issue no. 6), Maxie never did submit the second part of this series, but it was selected both as a reader pick and as a piece that remains relevant and useful to those us taking AU courses today.

I make a lot of lists. They are not especially successful, unless you count making the list itself as Task Number One. (I do.) But this time it was going to be different; I’d be with it. Organized. Forging ahead, chasing dreams, blah blah blah.

I made the list. The Great List of Summer Accomplishment. Why do I always include the words ?great? and ?accomplishment? in my list names? I’m sadistic, or a sucker, or just plain dumb, I guess.

The problem was that the list was big and long and sprawling?hence the ?great??and this characteristic kept me from accomplishing the ?accomplishment? part. I was overwhelmed. I needed to subdivide the list, so I got a great planner to help me tackle my Great Accomplishment Monstrosity.

Actually, that name kind of describes my planner. It separates tasks into categories, days, and hours, and there’s all kinds of columns and rows and general blank-lined goodness just waiting to organize my life. The problem: This planner is so awesome that it takes considerable effort to set it up. But I did it religiously, until I kind of stopped cold turkey because it was complicated and tiring and there’s so much more to do in life than filling in a planner. Also, pretty much the only thing I was doing in life was filling in the planner, unless you count Constantly check Facebook as Task Number Two, and even I don’t do that.

So it was back to the list drawing board. Instead of tasks, I made a new list of goals. These were more general than specific, which caused problems when I tried to figure out whether I could legitimately cross something out. Like Teach my child a passage from Shakespeare. How long is a passage? How many tears constitute success? Does it count if she memorized one line before the Shakespeare session descended into iambic pentametering of today’s top 40? I mean, it was fun?aside from the tears part?though possibly less educational. Then somewhere between Shakespeare and Go birding I lost the list, and that was it for Great Goals of Accomplishment.

Since goal setting was clearly too arduous, I tried merely thinking about goals. This was fun. I spent a lot of time researching great places to go and great things to do, alternating with ordering massive quantities of books off Amazon. I was successful in all these endeavours?meaning the research and book buying, of course. Somehow nothing ever made it past the ethereal thinking stage, which meant that I had fun, though the intended beneficiaries of the fun did not.

But I really didn’t feel guilty, and That’s when it hit me. Making lists is how I have fun. I get a rush from list making, the same way normal people do when they skateboard or run marathons.

And That’s why, when I realized summer’s almost over and back-to-school season’s upon us, my first thought was to get a list going. Because It’s in making a dream list of stuff I’ll never get done that I can cope with the future and relax and enjoy the living I’m doing right now.

Does it ever seem as though the secrets of life can be narrowed down to a formula? Success is 99 per cent perspiration. Eating right plus getting exercise makes you lose weight. Do this, get that.

It sounds reasonable, right? If you don’t put in the time, you can’t expect to get results. And yet It’s missing something significant, and that omission might affect your productivity at home, work, and school.

At the risk of harping on a truism, quality wins out over quantity every single time.

Recently I came across a fascinating Harvard Business Review piece that applied the quality vs. quantity question to an area that needs it badly: the workplace. As the article notes, the current model of employment presumes that your worth as an employee is determined by your hours; after all, That’s what your wage is usually based upon. But the author suggests that this is deeply flawed.

Not to say that your boss doesn’t want top-notch work. But inevitably, when managers equate work with time, they lose the soul behind the effort, destroying the creative spark and consequently, productivity: ?By focusing on hours worked instead of results produced, they let professionals avoid answering the most critical question: ?Am I currently using my time in the best possible way??? This makes professional employees, the article claims, learn to ?use their time inefficiently.?

When we re-enter the educational world from the workforce, It’s hard not to carry with us these hardwired concepts, ill-suited as they may be to personal or professional studies. Because just as more hours spent at work don’t necessarily equal excellent product, neither do more hours spent studying.

Frequently students follow a strict schedule: two hours to study, then a break. Another hour, another few minutes to relax. This places the focus on hours spent studying, which is good in one way, but it also means that we will never ask ourselves whether we’re using those hours well.

We always manage to fill up the time we have, whether It’s many hours or just 20 minutes. If we’ve got all the time in the world to finish a task?or even just half a day?chances are we’ll take that time. But if we focus on end product over hours, It’s likely that we’ll work faster?and better.

Time is precious. Let’s use it well.

This is not a bad thing. Mid-thirties is not old. Mid-sixties is not old. But 35 has felt so far away for so long that It’s a little unsettling to see myself approaching it so soon.

At the same time, I want to celebrate getting older. I want to do things I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time or nerve to try. I want to stop making excuses. So I decided to make a bucket list: everything I really want to make happen this year, before I hit 35 next spring.

My first stop was to seek inspiration online. Surely someone else had had this idea before! What does the rest of the world think people should do before they turn 35?

That was a mistake. Or maybe it was good, because laughter is good medicine. Some of the lists were way out of my league. Sure, I’d like to climb Everest, but It’s not like you can just go over there on a whim and start climbing. Then there were the ideas that seemed a bit ill-advised. Set up a blind date with a stranger online and have sex with him at his place afterward? Really?

And while not all the ideas centered around flings or exotic adventures (though quite a few did), I began to realize that the problem was that these lists were someone else’s. My list needed to be my own.

And so I started writing. It didn’t need to be cool stuff or even Facebook-able stuff. Little things like ?figure out how to use the camera I’ve owned for two years??thoughts that have been bugging me but that I’ve never actually acted upon. Take a CPR class. Try out downhill skiing. Go see an opera. Learn to crochet. Go to a haunted house. Take a weekend away with my mom. All things that fall under the ?I’ve always wanted to do this? category, and that are fairly reasonable to make happen in a year.

Reasonable was the key, because I didn’t want to set myself up for failure. Although Antarctica and Iceland are both dreams of mine, I won’t be heading in either direction this year or even within the next decade. And I didn’t want to pressure myself to do something I’d hate. I don’t want to run a marathon; I don’t even want to try. I do want to run a 5K without passing out, though (long story), so That’s on the list. And I have the crazy idea of learning how to do the splits, even if it kills me. (And well it may.)

What’s on your subconscious bucket list? What thoughts and ideas have been sitting at the back of your mind for a while? don’t wait for a milestone to get started in pursuing your dreams, no matter how small or silly. Which reminds me: It’s time to start some serious stretching if I’m going to figure out the splits by 2014. 

That’s enough time to learn how to save a life someday.

Recently, the local library offered a community CPR class on a weekday evening. In just three hours, I learned enough to surprise and shock me. In the area where I live, the average paramedic response time is six to eight minutes. (In remote areas, or during bad weather conditions, that time increases.) Sounds good, right? But when someone goes into cardiac arrest, his chances of survival decrease by seven to ten per cent for every minute he’s not being treated.

Do the math. That’s why community knowledge of CPR skills is so important.

For most of us, our medical know-how comes from TV. Mouth-to-mouth; a few chest compressions; giant AED paddles and someone shouting, ?Clear!? It all seems complicated, scary, well beyond the scope and skill of a layperson.

But It’s not. Any adult can learn CPR. Any adult can learn how to save a life.

CPR recommendations have changed, the paramedics told us. You’re not expected to give mouth-to-mouth anymore; in fact, You’re usually discouraged from doing so. Chest compressions are the preferred method of providing CPR, and although there’s a specific way to perform them, It’s easy to learn. You don’t need big muscles; your body weight helps you out (if You’re small like me, you will have to work harder?it is definitely a workout?but it is doable).

As for AED use, It’s quite simple; and modern units are small, easy to use, and come with both pictorial directions and voice guidance. Most will tell you whether a shock is advised in your patient’s situation.

How many more patients would survive cardiac arrest if we all knew basic life-saving skills? Check with your local hospital or fire department, community college, and library, or even your provincial heart health association; many organizations offer short, free classes to community members. The one I attended was sponsored by the local volunteer fire department.

It’s not a formal certification. I can’t work as a paramedic or put any kind of credentials on my resume. But I do know enough to work an AED if someone has a heart attack in the middle of the mall, and I can perform basic CPR ?just in case? there’s an emergency somewhere and the responders haven’t arrived yet. I know what to do if someone keels over at a party. I can help a family member, friend, or stranger.

I can give someone a chance at life. That’s an amazing feeling.

It’s worth three hours to know that.

Things were going well; out-of-my-mind busy, but well. The house wasn’t particularly clean, but full-time work and part-time school, coupled with family and volunteer commitments, meant that something had to slide. Work was moving along, and for the first time ever I’d become really excited about my studies. I’d narrowed my focus, selected more challenging courses, and added another class to my course load. I was ready. I could handle it.

And then.

Then came the crisis.

My son, who has special needs and whose emotional and behavioral issues had always caused tension at home, at school, and on the playground, was abruptly dismissed from his school. They were unwilling to accommodate his needs; he was disruptive; and to be honest, he wasn’t learning anything. It was time to begin the process of creating an individualized education plan with a new school, one that hopefully would accept him, embrace him, and want to help him. In the meantime, on top of work, school, and the emotional exhaustion that accompanies raising a child with special needs, I would need to homeschool him until we could find a permanent school placement for him.

Wrecks

As you move along on your educational journey, chances are you’ll run into some obstacles. When It’s something small?a nasty bout of the flu that derails your schedule, or a big work project that eats into your study time?it can be incredibly frustrating to navigate around it. But sometimes these ?bumps on the road? are more like full-on wrecks: windshield smashed, bumper twisted, maybe even flames flickering out from under the hood. When It’s a question of something serious, like divorce, death in the family, financial crisis, or an issue with a child, It’s hard enough to figure out how to deal with the problem itself, let alone things like work, education, and other commitments.

In a time of crisis, studying from home has its advantages. It does allow for a more flexible schedule; it does mean a certain freedom to shift priorities and lifestyle. But it also means that figuring out where everything stands is a bit more confusing.

In this series of articles, we’ll take a look at some coping strategies that may help you navigate your way through the crisis and safely to the other side.

don’t Prioritize, Organize

When we meet with an obstacle, we’re traditionally urged to redefine our goals, at least temporarily; in other words, to prioritize, to decide what’s important and what’s not.

Often the perception is that the crisis takes precedence over everything else. And in a way, it does; I have to teach my child right now. I must come up with the paperwork to get him the help he needs. He requires weekly therapy and at-home intervention. But so often the emphasis on prioritization is taken to mean that everything else should go by the wayside.

That’s dangerous thinking. ?Prioritize? doesn’t necessarily mean letting go of your dreams and commitments in favour of that nebulous notion of ?more important.? Nor does it mean pretending that your pre-existing commitments don’t matter. In fact, doing so can drastically increase your stress levels, not to mention prolong the emotional and physical damage to yourself, since you’ll have to deal with catching up with the mess later, after the more immediate problems are resolved or stabilized.

Instead of trying to prioritize, organize. Start out by writing a list of everything going on in your life: the big stuff, like work, school, and of course anything referring to the crisis, but also smaller commitments (cleaning the bathrooms, doing the banking, grocery shopping) and regular practices and habits (weekly yoga class, calling your mom, curling up with a novel). Make it a major brainstorming session. Enlist your partner, friends, and kids: what do I need to do? What do I like to do? Whether It’s important or not, write it down.

But now what? What if everything is important? don’t the dishes have to get done eventually? What about those clients? Who’s going to take care of my kids while I get caught up in my history class? And how do I explain all this to the people to whom I have commitments?

Once you’ve got that list in place, you can move forward with the next step in organizing. In next week’s article, we’ll take a look at a better way of prioritizing and discuss why you can and should ask for help?and where you should be looking.

You say you can’t cope

But when you give up on me

You’re putting into words what I feel inside

You’re proving to me that I was right:

I can’t do it

Why should I even try?

Are you surprised when I get frustrated? Are you surprised when I wander away from my work? Are you surprised when I stop bothering, too?

Did you think I wasn’t seeing? Did you think I wasn’t learning? Did you think I wasn’t taking cues, mirroring them in my own life and attitudes?

You didn’t teach me, and I didn’t know why.

You didn’t teach me, so I existed in a half-limbo of confusion and anxiety.

You didn’t teach me?but I learned.

I learned that when there’s a problem, you should walk away from it.

I learned that if a challenge looks too challenging, you should stop before you start.

I learned that if you can’t clearly see the future, you shouldn’t create a vision.

I learned that you shouldn’t believe or dare to dream.

You said I couldn’t learn much. You said there was no point. You said I’d just get frustrated and give up.

But you gave up instead.

You’ve got your books. You’ve got your supplies. You’ve carved out time and finances and a space to work, and now You’re ready to begin the school year.

Except that You’re not, really.

You sit at your desk and stare at the schedule?and stare and stare. You have a headache. You’re terrified. You want to be excited, you need to get a good start, and yet You’re just not feeling it. What you are feeling is a little over your head.

We hear a lot about scheduling, and for good reason. Figuring out your study plan is crucial; and whether you use a daily schedule or set weekly goals, having some kind of plan is key to your educational success.

But sometimes, marrying yourself to your schedule?especially early in the semester?can hurt more than it helps.

Have you ever started out with plans to do a distance run, but got sidelined early in the race thanks to cramps or exhaustion? Maybe you didn’t warm up enough. Maybe you started out too fast, with too great an intensity. Or maybe you threw yourself into it with no idea of the physical and emotional costs.

An educational journey is the same way. As soon as we get our course materials, we figure out goals, set up schedules, and commit ourselves to a rigorous plan of study and focus. We fear that if we fall behind at the beginning, we’ll never catch up, so we push ourselves hard in the first few weeks.

But amidst all our good intentions, we’re forgetting something vitally important: the semester isn’t a sprint, It’s a cross-country run. And overdoing it at the outset can often mean we get burned out more quickly later on, when it matters even more.

Some long-distance runners prefer to go at a moderate pace early in the run, and then amp it up midway through once they’re warmed up and comfortable. Similarly, easing yourself into your new course load may give you the chance to prepare yourself emotionally, mentally, and, yes, physically, for the academic marathon You’re about to take on.

If you’ve got a block, You’re extremely stressed, or you think you’ve taken on more than you can handle, then start out at a gentler pace. You’ve made a schedule, but you don’t have to stick to it the first week or two. Giving yourself time to get accustomed to your courses?or, if You’re a new student, to university-level academics in general?may put you behind a few days, but you’ll easily catch those up once you find yourself getting into the flow of the semester.

Starting out strong may sound good in theory, but in the end It’s a steady pace and a strong, determined finish that will make or break your academic career. Slow but steady truly does win the race.

I hate crooning singers making love to the microphone. I despise tear-jerking tunes and emotionally manipulative lyrics (I’m looking at you, ?Christmas Shoes?). Worst of all, most of the holiday songs I hear are celebrating something I don’t believe in.

Winter.

Nothing gets me more than all this winter love. Where are the songs about summer? We’ve got whole radio stations dedicated to pro-frost sentiment, but come June there’ll be nary a melody about ?Eighty degrees and life is great.?

It’s solely winter we sing about, but why? Snow is only a winter wonderland if you don’t have to shovel it. Christmastime in the city is characterized by hazardous driving conditions, rude motorists, and lots of accidents to prove it. And while hot cocoa by the fire is a nice thought, a frosted drink and a beach chair are so much better. Bonus points if there are palm trees and a good-looking pool boy.

we’re days away from the winter solstice. This is supposed to be a comforting thing–?we’re now on our way to summer!?–but it doesn’t quite work that way, does it? We can’t be anywhere close to the warm weather if the temperature is still on its miserable downward skid toward January.

Here the weather outside is, as the song goes, frightful. And the fireplace is indeed delightful, if you have one; otherwise, jacking up the thermostat to 80 degrees gives a similar scratchy warmth. But then It’s frightful again if you open the door to go buy food or take your child to school (spoiled brat; when I was a kid I walked to school both ways uphill in the snow).

Also frightful? The heating bill.

Of course I could just move to Florida and be done with winter for good. But even if I did, Florida radios would still play those silly carols with no thought of irony. Ever sat and listened to a choir singing ?Warm this time of winter? when It’s 80 degrees out? I have. It doesn’t work.

But then again, do winter songs really work in the north? As far as I’m concerned, crooning winter carols just adds insult to the injuries sustained when I slipped on the ice.

Go ahead, celebrate the holidays. Deck the halls, drink and be merry, and look at ships coming sailing in. But please, for the love of all good things, don’t tell me that outside there’s a winter wonderland.