It’s amazing to me how this stay-at-home-mom gig works. Caring for Shanna requires continual physical effort (it’s not *hard* physical effort, but it is physical work) and almost no intellectual effort. Yet I don’t have the mental bandwidth to do much else at the same time. Studying Spanish is hard. I don’t retain the stuff I do while I’m playing with her. I have to be interruptable at all times (As I come back from a diaper change that had to happen mid-entry). I feel like my brain is not working the way it used to. I feel like I am less smart, like my brain is on hiatus.

This doesn’t make the prospect of studying for the comp exam any happier. My daughter is the whole scope of my world right now, or at least I wish she was. I’m so happy most days. I love seeing how she changes day by day. This is all I want to be doing right now. It’s interesting because I have always derived so much of my self-image from my intelligence and what I am doing right now has no part in that.

I want to be done with school so bad I could scream. I have missed four semesters of school entirely in the past 23 years. Otherwise I have been in school for at least some portion of every term. I am starting to hate school. I am starting to lose any desire to learn what can be taught in school. There are still many things I want to learn–don’t get me wrong. I just want to go out into the world, damnit.

But I have a Spanish presentation tonight. And finals next week. And I have many more months of studying ahead of me for the comp exam. And I have two more terms of Spanish if I pass the exam. I have decided that I am going to study like mad and take the test in April. If I fail I am not going to bother with finishing Spanish. I have too much resentment as it is. I hope I don’t fail. I am going to work pretty hard to ensure I don’t. *sigh*