In a new weekly feature, recent Her.ie recruit Mary is sharing her journey through the very grown-up world of juggling a career with further education.

Looking back over her first semester and forward to a thesis, Mary is learning some lessons along the way about time management, the trials of being a born crammer, the importance of sharing the stressful moments... and the reason why "mature student" is probably an oxymoron.

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Stressed Does Not Even Cover It

Normally this is a light-hearted, fun, slightly hare-brained attempt at telling you how college is going, and it's all a bit of a giggle. But the reality this week is that I am absolutely stressed out. On the verge of exploding you might say. This laissez-faire attitude that I have to getting things done has come back and bit me on the ass, extremely hard. The reason being is that as I’m writing this, I have an essay due in a few hours. It’s an in-depth literature review, to the tune of 3,000 words and I haven’t started. At. All. This isn’t a “I haven’t started” but secretly have it all done and just want to put fancy pictures in. No, no. This is a “I haven’t started” in that I literally have printed out things (as you know from last week) but have not read them. I can’t put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – until I have them read. And basically, it’s just a dominio effect after that. There’s nothing that can be done unless I suddenly turn into a magician and can somehow pull the proverbial bunny out of the hat. Hmm. Failing that – which is likely – I’m going to have to sprint from work to college, where I have approximately an hour and a half to get it done. Possible? Yes. Chances of a high quality piece of work being produced? Extremely doubtful. Disappointed in myself? Most definitely. The week just kind of ran away from me. This time last week, I was sitting here writing in an almost gloating fashion about how good I was at being a last-minute studier. Now, I feel like bashing my head off a brick wall and kicking my February 19th self firmly up the behind. I suspect that I may have learned a lesson here, but there’s a gut fear that it won’t matter. That somehow, I will get this essay done – out of sheer stubbornness if nothing else – and once it is handed in, I will forget what this horrific, panicked state of mind feels like and will continue on my merry way of being a Class A procrastinator. Can someone please remind me when I start gloating next time?