UNrequired Reading

Today is the first day of my last class for my master’s degree.  I am very excited about graduating in eight short weeks.  Because I try to balance school, a full time job, and a growing family, one of the things that helps is trying to be ahead on the reading.  I got all the books for this semester over the summer, and was able to finish two of the three books for this class prior to the start.  I also read five chapters of the third book before looking at the syllabus for the course I started today.  I really felt like this class was going to be a breeze.

But what I saw in the syllabus made that feeling go away.  Not because the material is hard or that I don’t think I can handle the work; it was the simple fact that the reading for the third and most difficult book begins with chapter six.  The first five chapters are completely unnecessary for the course.  We will not be quizzed, tested, or required in any way to know the material on those pages.  It will appear in no writing assignments.  There will be no discussions about it on the discussion boards.  I didn’t need to read a single word of it for this class.

At first I was angry, but the truth is there was so good info in those pages, things that were meaningful to me.  The purpose of taking a class is not to get a grade or jump through hoops, but to learn things previously unknown to me.  I could look at it as five chapters of time wasted or as five chapters of stuff I didn’t know before but do now.  It isn’t always easy to choose to be positive when things don’t go our way, but I’m learning more and more to encourage positive responses in my own life and in the lives of those around me.