Good Deal

So today is a good day.

I've been feeling kind of "????" about the coming end-of-semester craze. Usually I collect paper ideas for classes throughout the semester, and by around this time know what I'm writing on for everything. This year though, I had zero clue about any of them until recently. I had some vague subject ideas - "Cranford and...foreign things" - but nothing close to focused. And I was getting a little freaked.

But these past 4 or 5 days, things have really been coming together. Turns out that when I get myself in gear, I can do things! My Russ abstract got the go-ahead; yet again I'm writing about the issue of children and agency - but this time through propaganda! (Analyzing it...not writing it.) As so often happens, I wrote myself into an idea, and then into being excited about it. I was dreading that paper, but less so now. I picked and read a bunch of my review book for Susan. I wrote a short paper for class tomorrow that I'm pleased with - it's different from how/what I usually write for classes, and that's a nice feeling, doing something new. My meeting with Deb, Tim and Leigh today was miraculous - I went in with like, almost literally nothing, and by talking through what I'm interested in doing and getting ideas and feedback, I ended up leaving with a solid idea for my project. (I'm going a proposal for a study about how students' tacit learning of written genres is affected if they feel that the genre in question has an expiration date for being useful in their lives. And Deb is so cool - I asked her if there might be a way to frame it so I could carry out the study as my project for her class next semester; she said she didn't think it was really related to literacies, but that she'd definitely be happy to have me do it if I wanted to, if I thought it would be productive. Yay supportive teachers excited about my research!)

I bought tickets to NH today! I am so excited. It's like...there are definitely specific people and places I want to go, but I'm almost more excited about just driving around and seeing the places that were once so much a part of my daily life. Elm Street, South Willow, Meetinghouse, the Vista Foods plaza, the drive down Wallace Road between my uncle's and Bedford...man, it's been so long. I was there very briefly in July '07, so it's been 2 1/2 years. It'll really be great.

So yeah. I'll probably be back to freaking out tomorrow or something, but right now things look almost doable.