Okay, so they told me that time in law school would be precious. So far I’m managing fairly well. It helps that I worked full-time during undergraduate and took 16-18 credit hours/semester at night. Then after Pumpkinhead was born, I worked a very busy desk at a law firm and regularly took on part-time legal transcription work from home at night in addition to a position with a community organization. So I can balance. But the question I have for myself is whether I’m really giving anything 100%. Sure I can juggle with the best of them. But can I do my best at any one thing? Hmm…
Pumpkinhead turns four this week. He’s having a party at school on Friday because Mommy just can’t get it together to do anything extra during the weekend. We’re going to have pizza and fruit kebabs/yogurt dip. I bought the fruit on Sunday, but Chapin ate most of it. 
Probably okay since I’d rather have it fresh, BUT when am I going to shop!?!? Then I called the local Pizza Hut and the teenage manager couldn’t guarantee me pizza by 10:25 a.m. (yes, my son’s school eats lunch at 10:30!!! 
). So now I have no fruit and no pizza. Oh, and Chapin knows I don’t keep juice in the house but when he saw that bottle of 100% Apple Berry, he just HAD to open it. 
So basically all I have for the party at this point is Spiderman blow-outs (Pumpkinhead wanted Spiderman hats but the one store I went to didn’t have them so I gave up and went with what they did have. Bad Mommy!) I will pull it all together. I always do. But the teensy part of my brain currently reserved for all things party-related is a starting to sound the alarm…
The other reason I’m thinking about time management is that I sit next to people with no kids. In fact, many in my class are childless, even though most are my age or older. Anyway, I listen to them talk about how they stay up until 2 a.m. studying or spend all day Saturday in the library with their study group and it makes me want to throw myself off a bridge. 
I just CAN’T do that and if that’s what it takes to be successful here, I’d better get comfy with mediocrity fairly quickly. I can spend a few hours on Westlaw at home, but using the library books? Too inefficient! If I can’t multitask serving Pumpkinhead’s lunch while listening to course CDs on my iPod and editing my course outline, my day is wasted! My classmates all seem highly intelligent, but there is no way to really tell how it will play out on exams until we get through a few semesters. I feel like I’m doing a lot, but not like I’m doing enough. Recent studies seem to indicate that multitasking just makes us ineffective because we don’t do any one thing our best. I guess what remains to be seen is whether my multitasking, never-enough-time approach is going to put me at the bottom of the class or whether the preparation/grading relationship really is a bit of a crapshoot, as many bloggers out there seem to advise….
