Hitting the Wall

OK, somewhere in the last two weeks, this stopped being fun. When I saw the Year 2 schedule in the summer before things got rolling again, intuitively I knew October would be a hellish month-- class on three out of four weekends, many overlapping due dates, and general fatigue. But being in it all-- actually down in the middle of it now-- really sucks much more than I expected. Can someone just hand me my shiny MBA diploma and give me an early get-out-of-jail-free card so I can be done with it all?

I was on the road two weeks ago traveling in Las Vegas for a team meeting, and this was where I hit the wall. I've had many work trips over the MBA program period, and all of them involve schlepping extra-heavy books hundreds of miles, reading materials on airplanes, and attending team conference calls in highly suboptimal locations. I've reached my limit. As I sat there in my beautiful Vegas hotel, having once again told my colleagues as they invited me out for the night "no thanks, I need to go back to my room and do homework," I realized I had crossed a point where the returns were lower than the effort I was putting in.

This semester is passing just as quickly as I'd suspected, but the work is taking more of a toll on me than I expected. I'm oh so focused on graduation in May!