Reflection

I’m finding myself in the midst of some interesting self-reflection as I’m supposed to be reflecting on blogging this semester. While self-reflection isn’t the goal of today’s blog assignment per se, it seems oddly appropriate if I am ultimately to get to the truth of the work I’ve done this semester.

I’ll be honest, this has been a suck-tastic semester. I became a grandmother in August. This is supposed to be great, right? I’m sure it would be great if my son were in a healthy relationship and ready to be a father. Sadly, he’s not, so what should be joyous is in fact extremely stressful.

The first week of the fall semester, and two weeks after my grandson was born, my father died after a long battle with Huntington’s disease. After he sustained a traumatic brain injury two years ago and became progressively more debilitated, his death came as somewhat of a relief. I’m horribly conflicted about my sense of relief – am I glad that he is no longer suffering or am I thankful to no longer be called upon as a caregiver? I don’t know and I hate that.

The past few months have been an endless tug-of-war as my time is divided – assisting my mother to downsize 71 years (51 years of marriage) accumulation of stuff (I’m tempted to say crap, but that seems unkind) and to move to a small condo, fulltime work, family including babysitting duties, and school.  In the past, school was at the top of my list of priorities, but it has most definitely fallen to the bottom of the heap this semester.

So how is any of this relevant to a reflection on the blogging we did this semester? As I review the class blog, and my posts in particular, I can see not only my struggles to understand the material, but I can also see exactly where I was at mentally when I wrote each post. I am very thankful to have had all of your insightful posts to help me slog through this material. Our class discussions have been immensely helpful, too. I admit I spent more time fantasizing about withdrawing from classes this semester than anyone ever should; if it hadn’t been for the help I’ve received from reading everyone’s posts I wouldn’t have made it through this class. And, while I am super appreciative of the help your posts provided me, I’m afraid I did not make a significant contribution of my own. I’m sure I didn’t get nearly as much out of this class as I would have given different circumstances, but, thanks to all of you, it wasn’t completely lost on me.