The writings on the wall have shown, and it ain’t pretty…

Dear friends,

It’s 5:38pm on this Sunday afternoon as I begin today’s post. Brief, but necessary, as I am in need of an outlet right now.

Week 1 of grad school is over, and though my workload is still light, I am filled with anticipatory anxiety for the coming months, as I fear I will not be able to handle schoolwork alongside my myriad extracurricular commitments. I am taking 3 classes, which is a full-time courseload for graduate students. If school were my only focus, I would have no doubt that I’d survive and thrive in grad school. But the added challenge of grad school is that school is no longer the only thing going on. I have part-time jobs and relationships to juggle. Following are all the things I am/will be doing outside of school:

1. Tutoring (freelance, SAT and reading group classes)
2. Dance studio teaching (group and private lessons)
3. Dance fitness teaching (2 hrs/week at Bay Club)
4. Athlete Voices website
5. Personal dance training
6. Dating

I’ve long relinquished my superhero complex, and I now know there is nothing glorious or noble or heroic about working myself to the ground and forsaking my mental health in the name of achievement, productivity and work output (you can’t perform at your peak level, anyway, when you don’t have solid mental health). People around me have expressed concern that I am biting off more than I can chew, and as much as I wish I could put on a brave face and soldier forward through this semester and excel at all I set my mind to, I am truthfully afraid that these people are right. What if I’m taking on way too much? I’m only human, after all. I need to set boundaries and be realistic with my goals, especially during this transitional semester as I return to school after 2 years apart, which is happening against the backdrop of general re-learning of how to interact with other human beings. On the SJSU student feed, one girl wrote, “If my professor asks me for fun facts about myself tomorrow, I’m gonna glitch.” Your sentiment is shared by many, girl.

This weekend I found myself dog tired, and I wasn’t even sure why. School barely started. Dance studio work has been light. Life has been chill. But this paradise is to be short-lived. Schoolwork will pick up in a couple weeks as the semester gets underway. Starting in September, I will begin to teach new group classes at the dance studio. We just wrapped up a six-week heels workshop series at Bay Club, and my boss wants me to keep the momentum going with another workshop series that will likely start in a few weeks. The Fall semester reading and writing group class is scheduled to begin September 5. If I was already so tired this past weekend, imagine how tired I will be once the semester and all my auxiliary commitments accelerate.

God. Just writing out all of this is getting me riled up. I feel an urge to cry, to scream, to vomit from all this anticipatory anxiety. I want so badly to do well in school, but I also enjoy my jobs and don’t want to give any of them up. I want to eat my cake and have it too. I live with a skewed sense of reality’s limitations… living with this idea that I can do it all, when that is nobody’s claim to make. I know I need to preserve my mental health and I recognize that school is a marathon, not a sprint, and if there is anything I learned from UCLA it’s that you can achieve nothing without mental health intact, and you must engage routinely in self-care (getting sleep, eating well, exercising, self-reflecting) should you wish to stay in the game as long as possible.

Okay. My cathartic rant has concluded. I am tutoring SAT English in less than an hour, so gotta get ready for that. The rest of the night, I will:

• Eat dinner
• Exercise
• Prepare for school next week (get ahead on readings)
• Re-take my student ID picture
• (Was going to add one more thing to do, but did a self-limitation check. There is always tomorrow.)

Talk you guys soon,

Belicia