the ups and downs in grades

1. my glasses never feel clean enough.
yuck.

so i have been constantly struggling with my world geography class this year. at a freshman level this class should've been an easy A. but unfortunatley it's not. even the guy who gets As on all of his tests turned to me today and said "these tests are hard." yes, yes they are. over 20 pages of notes, 75 vocabulary words, map identifications of states, countries, rivers, lakes, capitals, geographical zones, and random cities. that is what each test is.
and today is the first time i made a B on one of those tests.
i am very proud. and i worked very hard (very hard). but it just seems unfair that ever two weeks i will have to repeat myself and work very hard. it is not my only class. if it was my only class i would do fine. i wouldn't mind the work load. but i have 4 other classes that should be a lot harder, 3 of them pertain to my major. yet i am wasting all of my time learning about Peru and Colombia and the Leeward Islands, etc etc.
i am fed up with this class but there is nothing i can do about it because i don't have room in my schedule to retake it.

I have had my Degree Progress Report up on my moniter for 3 days now. Everyday I look at it an scribble notes of what I am missing and what I need to take.
I have run into one problem.
I need 124 hours to graduate.
Yet if I take 15 hours next spring, 15 hours in the summer, 15 hours in the fall I will somehow be 4 hours short. Which is dumb because you can't divide 124 by 3 so you have take TWO extra class than necessary to gradute.
WTF- I know.

So somehow I have to squeeze in two classes. I'm thinking a Maymester and 17 hours in the fall.
Sometimes I hate school, really. But I do like to learn. Just not when my life is judged on my As, Bs, and Cs. And depending on my grades is how my social life is judged. I don't even go out as much as the regular college student. I don't spend my whole studying either. But it's balanced.
(Instead of going to a party last Saturday, Greg and I read at Borders until 10 and then I went to bed at like 10:30. What 20 yr old does that?) I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that I work hard so it's a shame that sometimes my hard work isn't visible because I don't mesh well with a class. Or that despite the fact that I am driven enough to take a full semester of classes during summer I am still 4 hours short.

It's just frustrating. And overwhelming.