Throttle, Break. That's All You Need to Know.

If you're anything like me, you tend to overcomplicate things.

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by the mundane, everyday tasks that I make myself feel like I need to get done; cook healthy meals, keep the apartment clean, finish my homework before the due date, maintain some kind of social life, water the plants, save money, exercise regularly, write in my bullet journal, write in my actual journal, spend quality time with my husband, eat as much ice cream as I can without feeling sick. You know, the usual stuff. Everyone's list is probably a little different, and many people out there probably don't even have a to-do list that keeps them up at night, but I do.

On days when I'm already quite busy, I keep my to-do list to a minimum. Two or three things per day, and I'm good to go. On days that seem emptier though, for some reason I write out big long lists of things that I "should" be doing. It's like, even when my life is entirely uncomplicated, I feel this strange urge to complicate it myself. Today, for instance, I have a day off from school. I have one appointment this afternoon, but otherwise it's a free day. Naturally, I wrote out a nine-piece to-do list in my bullet journal and numbered the items in the order I'm going to do them to make sure that I make the most of my day!

Sometimes, I honestly think there's something wrong with me.

I've heard people say that they wished they had my organizational skills. I know a few people who could do with better time-management strategies. If you think you're one of those people, then I highly recommend making yourself a simple to-do list and crossing off items as you go. But if you're more like me, and you can't seem to stop organizing and reorganizing your life to the point where it feels overwhelming, you might benefit from what I've learned recently.

Last week, I got to go snowmobiling with my dad and uncle. We were in Manitoba for a funeral, and there was still plenty of snow on the ground in the rural area where my uncle lives. I had never been on a snowmobile so I was pretty excited to hop on with my dad and ride with him across the open plains and along narrow forest trails. We only fell off once, and it was when we had returned to my uncle's yard and were trying to park. (Nice, right?) At some point, my dad stopped the snowmobile and offered me a turn driving. I was a little nervous. The snow was hard-packed and icy, making the ride bumpy an unstable. But I said, "Sure, why not?" and climbed onto the front seat.

My dad gave me a quick driving lesson.

"Throttle, break," he said, pointing to one handlebar, then the other. "That's all you need to know."

And with that, we were off!

Leave it to my dad to take some big complicated foreign machine and sum it up in exactly two words. His simple and easy approach to driving a snowmobile got me thinking. Is everything that simple?

I think it can be, if we don't let ourselves overcomplicate things. Most of the things I put on my to-do lists are not essential. Homework is pretty essential, and so are eating and sleeping. But the rest? So what if my dirty dishes pile up for a few days? When I have time, I wash them. But it is so not worth stressing about. Every once in a while I just need a reminder to simplify my life, to focus on what's really important and let the other things go.

So I'm trying something new; when I start feeling overwhelmed by all the demands and strains that I'm putting on myself, I remember that moment in Manitoba. I take a deep breath. And I remind myself that it's actually very simple. Throttle when you're ready to get things done. Break when you need to rest. Don't worry about the stuff that doesn't get done. It will work itself out in the end.

Bad Classes

   I feel like we talk about school a lot. To be honest, it's difficult not to when school pretty much runs your life. When you're down to the last few weeks of the school year, all that pressure explodes exponentially and it's hard not to be that student that has no life outside of school.

   But on the flipside, it's also hard to take your university courses seriously when... well, when they suck.

    There's a few reasons why a course might suck. The reason I ran into the most was that the course had a bad instructor.

   I've had a few courses where the instructor wasn't even a professional teacher. In one of these, the university hired a hospital administrator to teach a class about the organizational structure of my province's public healthcare system. Sounds smart, right? He sure knew what he was talking about, but you could tell that, to him, teaching that course was just an extra thing. The result? Well, I think I only remember one thing from that class. Plus, the class had to fit his full-time work schedule, and that meant a three-hour lecture late in the evening - too late for me to ride the bus home, which meant bigger gas bills.

   Sometimes, though, even professors aren't good teachers. They're the kind that excel at doing research, but maybe struggle with the teaching part of their job. This is difficult because these professors tend to have a hard time getting down on a lowly undergrad's level they ramble about really advanced stuff while you're still learning the basics.

   Even more rarely (and I don't wish this on anyone), your professor will be a mess. Like, the kind that gets upset every time someone walks in late, or has to leave early, or whenever the projector isn't working. The kind that likes to point out often that it takes work to prepare a lecture, or to mark assignments and tests. The kind that dismisses a class early because how dare we not do the readings this one time, while any other prof would have just said; "Well, if you don't understand, that's your fault."

   Also rarely, you'll have the high-and-mighty professor. The kind that thinks they're way more important than anyone else in the room and get mad when they feel like they've been slighted. Those ones are the worst.

   The professor isn't always to blame, though: A university is a business. They're there to make money. If you go to university and wonder why you have to take so many electives; my answer for you is that the university is making extra bucks off of you. This is my last school year of my bachelor degree, and about 8/10 of the classes I took were electives, and I still don't have any reason to believe that taking these extra courses is going to help me in my professional life. These courses are probably great for the people who are interested in them, but since they have nothing to do with my degree and I'm only there for the credits, they're not great at all.

   So what do you do? How do you avoid these bad courses, and how do you deal with one if you wind up in one? The short answer is: You can't predict which courses will be bad, and you'll just have to tough it out.

   You can avoid bad elective by planning out your classes ahead of time; remember when I said you should plan out all of your courses right when you start university? This is one huge reason why that's important. Third- and fourth-year classes usually have prerequisites, so if you're just looking at them in your third and fourth years, you're probably too late to get into them. If I had known this when I started university, I'd probably be taking more creative writing classes (because they're fun) and more low-key science classes (because those would have actually applied to the career I'm chasing). Instead I got stuck with English, political science, and philosophy courses. But hey, even when you wind up stuck in a course you didn't want, keep an open mind: sometimes the class will surprise you and you'll like it a lot more than you thought you would. This happened to me more than twice during my degree.

   What about bad profs? Well, there are websites like ratemyprofessors.com where students can leave public reviews of their teachers, but there are obvious problems with it: what other people have to say about a professor may or may not be anything like how your experience with them will be. Reading reviews from sites like these, I agree with positive reviews about profs I liked, and agree with negative reviews about profs I didn't like. Then I look at opposing reviews and wonder how in the world they could think that about Dr. so-and-so. They might give you an idea of what to expect, but you can't really rely on it. Likewise, you can ask your friends that have had classes with them before, but the same problems apply: your experience could be completely different from theirs.

   So when it comes to bad profs, you just have to tough it out. If their lectures are boring and not helpful, then try spending lecture time reading and reviewing the textbook and the lecture slides instead. If they're bad at relaying instructions, badger them for details! If they're unstable or nasty, sit in the back. There's no universal solution, and sometimes it will feel like there's no good solution. But if you work at it and use your resources (there's always plenty at university) at least one workable solution will come up.

To school, or not to school?

That is the question.

I grew up in a household where both my parents had university degrees. One of my grandparents was a university professor. It was always clear that my brothers and I were expected to go to university after we graduated from high school.

For some people, that path makes sense. Frankly, I think it's overrated.

University is a big committment. I think one of the biggest mistakes young people make is to dive in headfirst when they're not really sure what they want. Then they end up with a degree in a field that they don't really like, or in a field that has no job prospects. On top of that, many university graduates end up with massive student loans and no real plan to pay them off.

Don't get me wrong - education is always a good thing, even if it doesn't make you more money. Learning is a never a waste of time. But in today's world of instant access to limitless information thanks to the Internet and smartphones, you can learn anything you want without ever setting foot inside a post-secondary institution. You don't go to university to learn. You go to university to get a degree that leads to a career.

And that's not all! There are so many options out there besides going straight into uni after high school. There's trade school, community college, apprenticeships, entry-level jobs, and specialized training programs for other things like law enforcement. For lots of people, it's smart to take a year or two off to work and save money so that you don't have to go into debt. Or travel, try new things, get used to life as an adult and figure out what you really want. University is a great choice for a lot of people, but what I'm trying to say is that no one should be beating themselves up if it isn't the right path for them.

I've tried a couple of different things, myself. After high school I went to community college and used scholarships to pay for a few classes that I thought I'd enjoy. After that, I took a year and a half off to serve a volunteer mission for my church in another part of the country. Then I went to university. I didn't know what I was doing yet, but I decided to start taking classes and figure it out as I go. For a bunch of reasons, I only stayed for one semester before moving back home to be closer to family. I applied to an online school and took another class from home in the meantime. I thought I'd be going back to university but things didn't work out that way. Now I'm back in community college doing a certificate program that will lead me directly into a career as an education assistant.

It's been an interesting journey, that's for sure! If you're reading this and thinking to yourself that you're in trouble because you still have no idea what you want to be when you grow up, don't worry! Sometimes it takes a little while to figure it out. But I'll also caution you against the opposite problem, which is waiting in limbo for inspiration to magically fall from the sky and knock you over the head.

There comes a point where you need to choose something and work hard for it, even if you're not dead certain you want to do it for the rest of your life. If this sounds like you, though, then I just wouldn't recommend choosing a career that's going to take 8 years of schooling to get to.