Today I had one of those awesome moments of clarity that allow me to pretend for 10 months of the year that I secretly enjoy the end of the semester. I still have 17-20 pages to write, but I can see the entire path now, all the way to the end. I know where I'm going. It came late this term, but damn it still feels good.
I also discovered that Mike's syllabus requests a "20 to 30" page paper rather than 25 pages, as everyone's somehow come to believe. This was a joyous discovery, and led directly to the aforementioned flash of insight.
I will finish. There will be a life after this semester. It sounds stupid, but it's like driving in a lot of fog - everything feels less oppressively endless if you can see where you're headed.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
[sings] "99 Horrible Tasks on My List, 99 Horrible Tasks..."
Take a few down, deal with their shit, still plenty of horrible tasks on the wall!
So I finally "[went] to the motherfucking bank like an ADULT," as Ali of hyperboleandahalf would say, and (surprise surprise) it turned out to be relatively painless. To my delight, my first instinct about the mystery charges proved correct - they were not mine. Apparently sometimes banks make adorable little "keying errors" and clear checks from your account that were not in fact written by you. This is what happened to me, leading to overdraft charges and overdue payments for those charges...but while it was a bit time-consuming, the man who helped me was very nice and dismissed all the charges, so I will not in fact have to ride my bike home for Christmas. (I did think he should have been a bit more apologetic, though - I mean, the name on the check was "Dominic Daniels" or something, pretty clearly not me.)
I also managed to get some smaller-scale things done today despite having very fragmented time chunks, something I don't usually excel at. I read the relevant essays out of a book I just got for papers, wrote up feedback on 4 of 5 student presentations from yesterday, wrote my WC records for tonight (it's slow)...not too bad. When I get home I will endeavor to write up the last presentation response, then go to sleep because damn I've been staying up too late.
So several major stresses are dealt with now, leaving me that much more energy for paper-writing goodness. I might even be able to get into a groove this weekend where I can enjoy the process a little. We shall see.
So I finally "[went] to the motherfucking bank like an ADULT," as Ali of hyperboleandahalf would say, and (surprise surprise) it turned out to be relatively painless. To my delight, my first instinct about the mystery charges proved correct - they were not mine. Apparently sometimes banks make adorable little "keying errors" and clear checks from your account that were not in fact written by you. This is what happened to me, leading to overdraft charges and overdue payments for those charges...but while it was a bit time-consuming, the man who helped me was very nice and dismissed all the charges, so I will not in fact have to ride my bike home for Christmas. (I did think he should have been a bit more apologetic, though - I mean, the name on the check was "Dominic Daniels" or something, pretty clearly not me.)
I also managed to get some smaller-scale things done today despite having very fragmented time chunks, something I don't usually excel at. I read the relevant essays out of a book I just got for papers, wrote up feedback on 4 of 5 student presentations from yesterday, wrote my WC records for tonight (it's slow)...not too bad. When I get home I will endeavor to write up the last presentation response, then go to sleep because damn I've been staying up too late.
So several major stresses are dealt with now, leaving me that much more energy for paper-writing goodness. I might even be able to get into a groove this weekend where I can enjoy the process a little. We shall see.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
[sings] "I Saw Five Hundred Thousand Tasks Come Sailing In, Come Sailing In, Come Sailing in..."
- Just cited my professor in the paper I'm writing for him. Here's hoping I'm correct in thinking his is not one of the articles I grossly misrepresented in my annotated bibliography, since I pulled the text from there...
- I fucking hate not having a parking space. I've literally paid more in tickets than I would have to get a spot. I need to do something about this. Anyone have a driveway/garage spot I can rent for the winter? (Bonus points if I can pay in cookies, hugs or stimulating discourse on visual rhetoric.)
- So while I'm slowly working to distance myself from my self-assigned title as the Worst Graduate Student of All Time, I'm falling deeper and deeper into the pit of being the Worst Adult of All Time. See: unpaid parking tickets, unspeakably stressful UW Credit Union debaucle, failure to have bought AN single Christmas gift, the fact that upon waking this morning and realizing I had eaten the last of my Candy Cane Kisses my first thought was "dammit, what the hell am I going to eat for breakfast now?", etc.
- I have still not watched the film upon which the bulk of my aforementioned paper's argument will rest. My draft currently starts with "[insert stuff about the scene where he walks btwn Towers here.]" That scene is the basis of my whole case.
- I discovered that Penny's recent gastric distress was almost certainly due to her new habit of eating my hair elastics. Guess that's a good reason to follow through on my constant resolutions to stop leaving them all over the house.
- It's been a year since I wrote a long paper so I might simply be forgetting (altering my own memory of the historical narrative, if you will - which you shouldn't), but I do not recall having this much trouble organizing the initial presentation of my idea. Sheesh. Turns out situating yourself in a scholarly context is complicated. Yeesh.
- [A bit later:] ...okay. I might have dramatically underestimated what I have to say for Mike. For the first time EVER, I think I have too much theory and context to present and not enough of my own ideas. I might not have to come up with a new argument for Christa - I might just split the idea further and make Mike's paper entirely about framing the kind of images I'm looking at and Christa's entirely about Man on Wire and what it's doing with 9/11. Maybe. Because I am looking at some serious length issues here.
Fucking ideas. And standards. Bah. I'm going to Woodman's.
(A second later - How is all that typing only 2 pages long???????)
- I fucking hate not having a parking space. I've literally paid more in tickets than I would have to get a spot. I need to do something about this. Anyone have a driveway/garage spot I can rent for the winter? (Bonus points if I can pay in cookies, hugs or stimulating discourse on visual rhetoric.)
- So while I'm slowly working to distance myself from my self-assigned title as the Worst Graduate Student of All Time, I'm falling deeper and deeper into the pit of being the Worst Adult of All Time. See: unpaid parking tickets, unspeakably stressful UW Credit Union debaucle, failure to have bought AN single Christmas gift, the fact that upon waking this morning and realizing I had eaten the last of my Candy Cane Kisses my first thought was "dammit, what the hell am I going to eat for breakfast now?", etc.
- I have still not watched the film upon which the bulk of my aforementioned paper's argument will rest. My draft currently starts with "[insert stuff about the scene where he walks btwn Towers here.]" That scene is the basis of my whole case.
- I discovered that Penny's recent gastric distress was almost certainly due to her new habit of eating my hair elastics. Guess that's a good reason to follow through on my constant resolutions to stop leaving them all over the house.
- It's been a year since I wrote a long paper so I might simply be forgetting (altering my own memory of the historical narrative, if you will - which you shouldn't), but I do not recall having this much trouble organizing the initial presentation of my idea. Sheesh. Turns out situating yourself in a scholarly context is complicated. Yeesh.
- [A bit later:] ...okay. I might have dramatically underestimated what I have to say for Mike. For the first time EVER, I think I have too much theory and context to present and not enough of my own ideas. I might not have to come up with a new argument for Christa - I might just split the idea further and make Mike's paper entirely about framing the kind of images I'm looking at and Christa's entirely about Man on Wire and what it's doing with 9/11. Maybe. Because I am looking at some serious length issues here.
Fucking ideas. And standards. Bah. I'm going to Woodman's.
(A second later - How is all that typing only 2 pages long???????)
Thursday, December 2, 2010
It's the Most Christmasy Time of the Year!
Alright. As of 7:32 CST today, Becca's Christmas season has officially begun - I'm listening to "All I Want for Christmas is You" for the first time this year.
(Aside - in addition to starting my season, this song also reminds me of Ryan Whalen, and how he once put this song on at a party at his place in like, mid-October or something, and we all went insane and danced and sang our faces off because it was the Best Idea Ever.)
(Aside - in addition to starting my season, this song also reminds me of Ryan Whalen, and how he once put this song on at a party at his place in like, mid-October or something, and we all went insane and danced and sang our faces off because it was the Best Idea Ever.)
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