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Hi! Wow, you've got a lot of stuff going on. I hope that things calm down for you and that you're feeling better. The most important thing we need to do is take care of ourselves. So what follows is meant to be helpful to you.

It's rather difficult for me to comment on your discussion posts, sinced you've had only one day of posts. Given your lack of opportunity to participate in this course and get assignments in, you may want to think about withdrawing. I only suggest this to you because we are more than half way through, and it seems from what you say that you have other priorities (and your health should be your first priority...), and I do want students to succeed in this course and their academic careers.
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This happens every semester lately. Last year it was the cancer and the baby daddy leaving us. At the bottom line, every problem I have right now is because I dont have enough money to fix the problem... and my ticket out of poverty is finishing my degree, so I dont see how dropping classes is going to make me able to afford medicine (etc). Right now I'm wasting a lot of time and energy with my band and doing chores for my handicapped landlady. I feel obliged to help her out because we get so many freebies in with our rent, but it's looking like that's what she had planned all along. And she's not so much handicapped as she is morbidly obese (what I just had surgery for) and I can't stand doing things for her that she oughtta be able to do for herself, maybe if people would quit doing things for her she'd be forced to lose weight. She was in the original surgery info session as I was last year, you have to take off a certain % of weight pre-op and she still hasn't taken any off. She's a dog breeder so after getting my 1 year old up and going in the morning I do all sorts of puppy chores (1 month old litter of 8) and then I wash & groom 2 of her adult show dogs a day (she's got 6 adult newfoundlands, 1 6 mo old puppy plus the litter), and other stuff like trash and dishes and things she needs to do for herself. By the time I'm done with all of that it's mid-afternoon and the vitamin deficiencies/Bipolar symptoms start creeping in. Once the baby wakes up from her nap I'm done.

I would like to jump in right with everyone else in the class where they are, and do the make-up work as I go. My other 2 classes are easier, I have the same instructor for both and the make-up work agreement is the same as what I've proposed here. I feel that with dropping the band and the work for the landlady I'll be able to have enough energy to pull through this class. I'm not too concerned about my GPA, Ive got a job waiting on me, all I need is any 4 year degree. Everybody else photocopied their names on some blank degree, I'ma bit more honest than that! The next good manic episode and I'll get the make-up work done. I've done whole classes in a week before.------------------------Originally I posted a response about how all of my problems come down to not having enough money and that I didn't see how dropping classes, lengthening the amount of time before I finish my degree, would help me. I took a deeper look at the amount of work I have missed, and the depth/quality of work you expect and after checking with financial aid to make sure I wouldn't owe any money back, I decided to drop the class.

Always remember to quit while you're ahead.

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