I have been putting this off for weeks now, but have decided that I need the creative outlet to release some of the tension and stress that has been building for the past several months. See 2020 and 2021 were rough years on the stress front. I thought things were improving and then I decided that I wanted to return back to school after my hiatus away for 18-months.
Little did I know that the first semester back after 18-months would be worse than the first semester back after 10-years. I did not expect that to say the least. However, I am here today to tell you that I will survive this. Today, I am grateful for the semester system that BYU-Idaho uses because I can take a few more weeks off to recover from the Winter 2022 semester.
BYU-Idaho Semesters and Tracks
If you are a traditional BYU-Idaho student, you are assigned a “track” where you have 2 semesters on and a semester off during the year. The semesters are only 14 weeks long, except for summers which are 7 weeks long. Every student is assigned a track and it usually coordinates with your attendance availability when submitting your initial application. I am sure there is more to it than just this, but you are assigned your “track” when you apply and are accepted to attend. On your off semesters, you can take courses online even as an on-campus student so you can still take classes, you’re just not on campus those off-track semesters.
My track is Fall to Winter which coincides with when I started my first class as a BYU-Idaho student. What that essentially means is that my two semesters “on” are Fall and Winter. The Fall semester runs from September until December and the Winter semester runs from January until the first part of April. I am not a traditional student, I am a 100% online student.
As an online student, the tracks do not matter as much except in the “consecutive semesters off” aspects. I do not think that it matters much at all for online students because we can take classes during any track or semester because we are never on-campus.
Believe it or not, this system works great for rapid progress towards a degree because you can fit in a whole semester of more classes each year. Even with me spreading classes out and taking fewer classes each semester than your traditional full-time student, I am still able to take 1-2 more classes each year than I would on a traditional 2-semester system. It might be quirky, but it works.
Reflective preface
Let me preface this next bit by saying that my Fall 2021 semester was busy and stressful, but I managed to pull through and even enjoy myself some. As you saw in previous reflections, I was learning a lot even if the “organization” and amount of “busy work” involved in one of my classes left a bit to be desired. That being said, I pulled through just fine. I was ready to tackle another semester.
I was registered for 2 more classes in the Winter 2022 semester. This semester ended on April 8, 2022. That will become important in a minute.
Unprepared for Winter 2022
Even though I handled the Fall 2021 semester fine, I was not as prepared for Winter 2022 as I thought I should have been. I even ended Fall 2022 with another semester with a 4.0 GPA. I cannot complain about that. What lurked ahead, is what I was not prepared for.
I do not think that anyone could prepare for that, no matter how hard they tried. There was just too much at once. The best you can do is hang on, ride it out, and hope for the best when it is all over. That is exactly what I did. It was a very long 14 weeks. I am not entirely sure how I found it in me to endure it, but here I am today telling you that I got through it. I did.
How it started
It started like any other semester thus far at BYU-Idaho for me. I was registered for 2 classes. Just 2. I am crazy, but I also have a million other commitment irons in my fire. Some would say too many. I will refute that with, “time management can be learned.” At any rate, I was excited and ready to go on the first day of class.
My classes for Winter 2022 were FCS 207 – Apparel Construction 1 and FCS 360 – Textile Science. This was only the first or second semester that FCS 360 was offered online, I believe. Both are regularly offered on-campus.
My expectation would be that FCS 207 would be my blow-off class. I was in there because I had to be not because I needed to be. Why? The department head was not interested in waiving my pre-requisites for another class that I wanted to take. That pre-requisite was FCS 207. It would be required for other classes as well, so I just swallowed my pride and registered for the class so that I would not have to “ask permission” to take a class from that point forward, at least in the Family and Consumer Sciences department.
Alternately, I expected that FCS 360 would be more challenging because it was an upper-division class. It is also a “science” class. My older sister, Ann, took a Textile Science at Houston Community College years ago and told me that it was a pretty easy class and that I would learn a lot in it. This got me excited because while I have been sewing for a very long time and I am aware of certain fabrics, I really wanted to know more about different fabrics, their uses, and ultimately their best care methods. This was the essence of what is taught in every textile science class according to the handful of people I chatted with that have taken any textile science class or something similar.
Ultimately, I was excited on January 5, 2022. I was profoundly excited that I was going to learn something useful and have an enjoyable semester even if I did have to take a class that was below my existing skillset.
The downhill death spiral
While it appeared that I was off to a good start, initially, it all went downhill from there.
By mid-January, COVID entered the Sansom house. Kyle was directly exposed at work – inadvertently. A coworker was directly exposed without knowing. He tested positive a few days later. A few days after that, Kyle woke up sick. Based on the horrible cough, the timing, and how fast it hit him, I sent him to go get tested. Sure enough, he was positive.
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