Tuesday. Just Calculus and Ed Psych and the Law Office.

In the second class of Calculus, the girls arrive a smidge earlier or the guys arrive a smidge later. Either way, the girls have creeped up to the front of the class.

There was Matrices/Linear Algebra homework, but that class doesn't meet on Tuesday. There was no Calculus homework, so today feels like "the start of Calculus, part II."

Amine is fast. He throws up new information on the board at a speed that makes it hard to think much about what we're copying down. I do recognize some of it from the book though, and I skootch my textbook over so the girl next to me can see the Example he's working from. She's young--maybe less than half my age--and she smells like coffee and cigarettes. I wonder for a moment if I smell like church, credit cards, a mortgage, three kids, a husband, and a dog.

I try to answer the questions I can and not fall behind. Sometimes I totally get what he's saying and sometimes I have no clue how he got the answer he got. I worry because between the extra classes and two jobs, I don't know when I'll have time to go back and review anything.

For the second half of the class he asks everyone to use their calculators to figure out the answers to some problems. Starfish-and-Coffee girl and I don't have calculators and the answers aren't in the book. We take notes. Afterwards, I ask Amine-the-instructor what kind of calculator to get. He tells me.

When class is over I walk back to the law office to work, I have a list of things to do for homework including Calculus problems, about 40 pages of reading for Ed Psych, the online quiz for the reading, and an ongoing discussion with the EdPsych instructor on how to make up the rest of the three weeks of work I missed.

But I feel basically okay about things. Work is fine. The kids are fine. I call the financial aid office and they front me enough of my loan to get the rest of my curriculum & instruction textbooks and the calculator. It's all done online. They deposit the money for the books and calculator straight into my checking account. I find this a little spookey.

Tuesday night I spend five hours on EdPsych. I get 8/10 on the quiz and do not throw anything breakable. But it's very stressful, watching my overall average on the quizzes drop to 84%. I try sooooo hard to shoot for "just pass all four classes this summer" but my emotional reaction to any grade is divided into "A" and "not A." And there aren't enough "A"s. I have no confidence this is going to get significantly better.

The rest of the week supports this theory.