Raising a Child and Attending College: Like Juggling in a Circus Act

I remember watching a circus on TV some years ago. There were plenty of good acts going on. First, you had the lion trainer, and trust me: This is always exciting. You sit there in amazement while he flicks the whip, and the chair and somehow it's enough to hold the ferocious beast at bay. Then there are the clowns and the guy getting shot out of the cannon. But what's really intriguing is the guy that has five or six poles, which look like broom sticks without the straw standing up vertically with plates resting on the tips. Now the show starts. He spins one of the plates really fast to keep it going so that it won't fall to the ground and break and then he does the same thing to another and he continues until all the plates are spinning. However in order to keep one of the plates from falling to the ground he has to continuously return to that plate and spin it again then he does the others .

This continues until he is either too tired to spin the plates and eventually one or two or three all fall to the ground and break. Sometimes the performer will knock all the plates to the ground on purpose signaling that his act is over and bow to the crowd.

Well this is exactly what it is like to attend college while raising children. This can become a pretty sticky situation. You will find yourself balancing your time between cooking, cleaning, homework, relationship/marriage, grocery store, feeding the children, tending to the children, putting the children to bed, helping the children with their homework and all the other miscellaneous duties in between. This does in fact become a juggling act. You are more or less spinning the plates of life and hoping you can get back to the first then the second before they stop spinning and fall to the ground. Your attention is divided between all the participants; you children, class, homework, housework and more. If you don't divide your time just right one of the plates will fall to the ground and break.