We all have the same number of hours in a day. For women, we get saddled with a bunch of invisible labor that adds to our domestic work.
All that invisible labor adds up. It'll burn you out. If your partner won't step up, then let the dishes sit in the sink until they smell. If you don't have clean dishes, switch to paper plates. There are bigger fish to fry and just because you were born with the vagina in your relationship does not mean it is all your job or responsibility.
When balancing school and work, well, something has to give and I've never really given a fuck about how my house looks. Next weekend I'll sing a different tune because I have company coming, but for this weekend, I have piles of papers, boxes, books, and lots on the to-do list.
Dirty secret about being a full-time student and working full-time? The to-do list never gets done. Embrace it now. There will be entropy. There will be dirty dishes. There will be stress.
What is especially true about online classes is the sense that you could be doing more or doing something right now.
To combat that desire to constantly check in with your online class, I set boundaries. (I could do a series of posts on boundaries and surviving graduate school, but those will come later.)
The syllabus says that you have to post once and reply to two other threads? Unless one of the other 13 threads is irresistible, leave them alone. You've done your part. Doing more does not make you A any higher.
I didn't used to be this way. I was that student. The one who did everything and then some. I made everyone else look bad. I know. I was young. Driven. A perfectionist.
As a recovering perfectionist, I've learned life is a lot happier when you do your best, but stop before it becomes a race to perfectionism.
If an online class has a more nebulous participation requirement like "continue the discussion through Sunday," then I look at this way, do I have anything substantial to add and write about? Will all I say be less than 100 words pretty much saying, "I like how you pointed out X. I agree."? Then it's not worth your time and it's really not adding to the discussion.
To survive your full-time job and your full-time online studies, something has to give. I recommend that it be your perfectionist tendencies before your sanity and home life.
Side note: After one semester, I'm pretty much over discussion boards. For the MFA workshop classes, the discussion boards make sense, but for reading reaction stuff, well, there really isn't a need to respond to many of the posts people put up. Three or four students rise to the top of the pack. These individuals always have something interesting to say.
I don't think class discussion boards are a replacement for what happens in a face-to-face seminar; I know this because I spent five years in traditional seminar settings. This is especially true when faculty don't provide a lesson or context for the week and just tell the class "Read X, Y, Z and answer the following questions in your discussion board post."
In my pedagogical opinion, online discussion boards should happen after the professor has posted either a written lecture, video lecture (with transcript for ADA accessibility), or podcast (with transcript for ADA accessibility). This lecture should be like what would happen in a classroom. The students should get an idea about what is important about this piece and the professor should fill in the gaps - not fellow classmates who may or may not have all the information correct.
The mere act of providing a discussion board and telling students to go talk there is the worst of the flipped classroom phenomenon. Give guidance, instruction, and some knowledge before telling the class "Go discuss this." Otherwise, it's like education through the University of Google and Youtube.
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