We're 2.5 weeks into the semester and my life is already insane. I've been getting an average of 5.5 hrs of sleep per night. Haha, that looks like more than it feels, trust me.
I've had one shift of clinical in the Medical ICU. It was super interesting. I saw one cardiac arrest. My nurse had just gone to lunch, but I was able to go with the nurse that got the call. There were tons of people in the room. It was Code Blue-cardiac or respiratory arrest. And luckily they were able to bring him out of it really quick. It was amazing to think that those nurses and doctors could legitimately go home and say they had saved a life that day. People talk about that a lot with the medical profession, but it was so obviously apparent on Saturday. It made me even more grateful that I'm studying nursing.
This semester has been different than any previous semester that I've had. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I think some contributing factors include how chill the teachers are when it comes to administrative issues, but how much they expect of you with the actual knowledge. They aren't as picky on some things, but they haven't babied us nearly as much in explaining assignments to the very tiniest detail. It is making me a little overwhelmed with how much I have to remember from physiology, pathophysiology, med/surg, and pharmacology. I am going to have to do a whole lot of reviewing this semester. If I end up having an extra semester because of a mission or timing with my GE's, I'm definitely going to try to take pathophysiology again. Physiology would also be super nice. Oh how helpful would that be!
And now I have a question:
I've been thinking about this for a good while. Whenever I start to date someone, I feel like I become a worse person. Obviously my schooling suffers because I don't have as much study time. But I also end up getting too little sleep (sleep deprivation that I can't blame on homework makes me feel really guilty), which leads to less effective scripture study and pretty much zero pondering time, less sincere prayers, not as much time spent with my family, less time to fulfill my callings, basically no time to exercise (this is pretty horrid when you're trying to train for a half-marathon), little time to be a good friend and spend time with all the people I would love to hang out with. This always leads to me feeling excessively guilty and overwhelmed because I can't be the person I want to be when I'm in a relationship. I'm not responsible enough. I don't have enough self control. I can't even do it all when I'm totally single, but it just gets 10x worse when I have a boyfriend. And this makes me sometimes feel a tiny bit of frustration at my boyfriend which leads to me being slightly grumpy and not very pleasant.
And so the question:
How can I date someone and still feel like I'm living a balanced life? How can I build a relationship with someone while maintaining my relationship with my other friends and family?
I don't know how.
1 comment:
In order to date someone and still feel like you're living a balanced life is to make that someone part of your plans for a balanced life. You want to train for a half marathon? Have them run with you. Want to maintain your relationship with friends and family? Have them do things with you and your friends and family. Want to go to bed on time? Set a curfew together and stick to it.
I dated Quincy while training for the Salt Lake marathon. Sometimes he would run with me and sometimes he wouldn't. But he always supported my time commitment to train as he too had other obligations (school, work, exercise, church callings, Nat'l Guard, etc.). We ran errands together. We did homework together. He helped me with projects – school, personal, work, etc. Once he helped me create a welcome sign for Rob when he came home from his mission. We cooked and cleaned together. All while dating. We supported each other's goals – sometimes in the details, but many times through emails and phone calls because of how busy we were. His support was so important then and now as the lack of sleep, stress, and workload have not decreased from that dating season.
The point of dating is to see how you mesh in the day-to-day living -- and not just as a couple separate from life itself. Getting engaged or married shouldn't be the first attempts at it. Working together; not just playing and kissing together. Also in regards to spending time with family (at least for Quincy and me) doing things together around or with family really provided some good and revealing discussions about our opinions, desires, and paradigms as evident in our family interactions.
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