This week my entire family came into town for the USC game. Since I grew up in LA, my entire family are SC fans. It’s my senior year and they’ve never come to visit me before so I’ve been really excited for the past few weeks. I pictured everything running smoothly, but since I’m still in school it has become more of a challenge than I had expected. I ended up getting food poisoning last night and decided I would wake up at 5:30 in order to do homework. I was being exteremly productive until my grandma called at 8 and said she wanted a tour of the school. Since it was my grandparents and they’d never been here before, I felt obligated to show them the school. The rest of the family had made plans for the day starting at 12 and my grandparents completely distracted me from being productive.
Throughout today I have viewed this distraction as a negative because it held me back from my school work that has been stressing me out. I spent the first part of the day bothered by the stress of classes that I was unable to enjoy the time I was spending with family. Half way through the day I came to the realization that I couldn’t change the fact that I became distracted and didn’t get as much done as I had hoped. I could not change the past and I was done allowing it to disrupt the time I was spending with my family. While distractions normally are avoidable, this one was not and I just needed to be okay with it.
The situation you were placed in is really difficult to avoid. I understand your obligation to show your grandparents around the school since I had to do the same thing when my friends and family come visit me in the middle of a term. The best part about this is you only have to show them around once and the distraction won’t repeat itself. What I have done in the past and I would recommend is to be more straight-forward with your family and friends and let them know you cannot spend a lot of time showing them around or spending time with them since you have to keep up with your assignments. From my experience, they usually respond well to honesty and are able to understand your situation so they do not bother you as much or take up too much of your time.