Plan the Work, Work the Plan

Finding out that I have, and in retrospect have always had, difficulty in reading textbooks has raised a slew of - well, I don't know whether to call them feelings or data bits. I've known for a long time that my prodigious vocabulary rose from the frustration of not being able to communicate what was inside my skull to the people who were running my life at the time. I spent a few decades refining that skill and parsing over my history, long past time when and gained knowledge could have rescued me from the terrors of junior high and high school, long past when these people were long gone out of my life. But I thought I knew everything that went into this history, including the clearly indisputable fact that I am a fast and accurate reader.

Textbooks, it turns out, are my kryptonite. My brain skitters over the pages like a frantic spider. As might be imagined, that makes gleaning any sort of understanding a bit difficult. Or maybe my brain does this with all books, but non-textbooks are just easier for me to catch.

Regardless, I've got to figure out some coping mechanisms for this newly-identified issue. I don't have time for careful copying out, which was my initial strategy for studying. It might have worked if I only had one or two classes, but I've got five, three of which are dillies. The other two have textbooks that are less technical and so can be cleared using my regular skills. 

It's dismaying to realize that I have no answers nor even the ghost of a clue. 

Except that in typing that sentence, I realized that I actually do. I've implemented a number of strategies that I've been discounting merely because they are coping mechanisms, not cures. I've set my computer's home page to the college's website. I'm trying out blogging as an accountability measure, and am using it regularly if not daily. I'm paying attention to clues, which is how I figured out that I'm having a difficult time reading textbooks (I'm still astonished that it took me this long to see what was bloody obvious in retrospect. This was happening in junior high! But I misattributed it, so there you are). I've started putting my bullet journal in an area that I always turn to first thing in the morning, so it will be more likely that I'll open it and actually take a look at the to-do lists I've set up. I watch youtube videos by and for people like me so I can learn more tips on how to cope. I have not collapsed in shame over being so far behind in my classes. I have not thrown up my hands and given up, either withdrawing or just accepting a failure on my transcripts. I am not giving up, I am not giving in, I am going forward and if I fall, that's the way I'll be pointed.

My plan today is my easiest two classes first, then thirty minute windsprints dedicated to each of my drafting classes in turn. It may work, it may not, but either way I'm going to learn something.

brb