There were several moments this week when I just wanted to stop and scream, “How am I possibly going to get this all done?!?!” The reality of all of the deadlines for grad school is finally setting in and my students at work need the same amount of attention whether I have other things going on in life or not. It is tempting to just wallow in the pressures of all of these deadlines but that is such a waste of time and energy. Whenever I catch myself starting to stress out about all the work I need to do, I consult the tasks on my choose-to list and start tackling them.

Consider the following story:

“Two cows were faced with an immense pasture of grass to graze. The first cow stood in awe and said, “How in the world will I ever finish all this grass? There is surely far too much here for me.” The second cow said nothing, put her head down, and started grazing.”

Every moment we waste worrying about getting something done is one less moment we have to actually start getting things done. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start grazing on some lesson plans.