game day

it's ironic that i'll be writing about this an hour before my friday morning class that i won't going to, but i was sitting in that same class two days ago and had an impression of an idea that i wanted to flesh out just to see if it sounded as stupid written out as it did in my head.. i hear all the time (being a sports fan) of talk by and about athletes about how much harder their job is than anyone thinks, since they have to work so hard in practice all week, and then when it comes to game day, they have to totally put themselves in a frame of mind that they can push themselves as hard as possible, and become warriors in a certain sense in order to play through all of the mental anguish and pain and blah blah blah..
my thinking in class two days ago was that going to graduate school involves a similar personality and adjustment, especially on a day like wednesday for me.. see, for those of you who don't know, graduate school (and particularly Ph.D. level coursework) isn't like any other classes you've ever taken.. you're not trying to get A's, you can't blow off papers and homeworks, and you have to seriously study and concentrate in order to even hope to keep up.. it's genuinely difficult and taxing, and your goal throughout your first two years is just to stay enrolled and sane all at the same time.. so, on a day like wednesday for me, when i have all four of my classes, it goes something like this:
11:00 - my microeconomics class
afterwards, i try to come home for a short lunch, because then,
2:30 - my statistics class
4:30 - my public budgeting class
6:00 - my organizational theory class,
and at 8:30, that class ends, and i get to come home.. so it's really about 9-10 hours of being at school, with possibly a short break for lunch, but the real intensity of it is that each class requires you to forget everything else that's going on and focus solely on that subject matter for an hour and a half or however long the class is.. and i'm being perfectly honest - you have to think only about that subject or you're going to get lost.. so, in a sense, it's game day for me every wednesday.. i have to have immense mental toughness and get myself into a state where i can shut everything else out for the entire day and focus on achieving multiple tasks that are all separate..
see, this did all sound a lot more likely and appropriate in my head, and part of the problem is that i'm trying to explain it just after getting up in the morning and i'm distracted by terrible morning tv.. anyway, i'll come back later and try to do better, either with this or something else..