So it begins

This week is the first full week of grad school classes for the fall semester. I'm already completely exhausted. For some reason I haven't been sleeping well for the past week. Last Wednesday, on one of my first nights back in Richmond, I went to bed at 11pm but didn't fall asleep until after 1am, then had to get up at 6am the next day. The next night I also had trouble falling asleep, although I was even more tired than the day before. This past weekend I went to Lynchburg to visit some of my Liberty friends. I wanted to visit before I got bogged down in schoolwork, and although it was an incredibly fun weekend, it didn't help my sleeping patterns (or lack thereof) very much at all. [Let me just add here that I miss my friends from Liberty so much right now! Just spending the weekend with everyone again made me realize that Liberty is a place of fellowship rarely found other places. I miss it now more than ever.]

I don't know what it is that's keeping me up, but I know I'm feeling overwhelmed. It's not the class content that has me stressed out either, but all the little things that I have to worry about. We need to order lab coats for one class, a goniometer for another, blank Sony CDs to record our clinical test, and we have to remember to order nametags from the bookstore or we won't be able to do our clinical rehabs at the hospital. Then there's rent to pay, quizzes to complete on Blackboard (they don't even count for a grade, yet we have to do them), and grocery shopping, since I don't have anything to eat in the apartment! It just seems that they're a million things running through my mind when I go to bed, and I can't shut my mind off long enough to fall asleep. So the fact that I had class from 8am to 5pm today was rough for my tired body.

I'm sure things will get better as I fall into a routine (which will involve going to bed early and drinking lots of coffee in the morning), but for now, I'm just trying to get through each day one at a time. From the looks of it, this is not going to be an easy semester.