Eight papers in one semester.
Eight papers in one semester.
EIGHT PAPERS IN ONE SEMESTER!
Have I mentioned that I have eight papers due this semester? For one grad class? I know I'm being a big whiny baby about this whole going to school at night thing while I still have a full-time job and am writing an epic book that will move America to tears of laughter and sorrow and will poetically speak to the beautiful human struggle that is adolescence and will spectacularly conclude with all of us joining hands like that Coca Cola "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" commercial only we'll sing "Kum Bah Yah, Motherfuckers" and we will be even more joyous and raucous and super fun than those people in the Coca Cola commercial, only with less 70s armpit hair because nothing crashes a party like too much armpit hair and not enough modern deodorant. Not that there's anything wrong with the crystal rock you rub on your pits so you don't get cancer, of course. Did I mention I was up until midnight every night this week working on my third paper? Wait. What was the point of this?
Hey, even I don't even know anymore.
Oh, yeah. My point was my therapist mentioned that maybe I don't have to work quite so hard on these papers. Maybe I don't have to get a 100% OMG A+++++++++ in this class. And honestly, I had every intention of dialing it in this semester and doing as little work as possible to just coast by and maybe get a B in the class because who really cares, it's just grad school for teachers and I just need the credits, I'm not trying to impress anybody.
And then I started actually taking the class and writing the papers and remembered, oh yeah, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I'm super-competitive and I need my pats on the head and my gold star on my forehead. I can't stop. You can't stop this kind of brainiac nerd magic. You just can't. So if I'm going to write a paper, I'm going to write the shizz out of it. I'm going to sparkle and shine.
Some of us just shine. We can't help it.
I would like to now add a note for all of my Facebook friends and let them know that they should be thanking me for the restraint I've had while NOT reporting every grade I've received in the class thus far. When I was in college I used to tape my report cards on the refrigerator for my first husband to see. He was an engineering major so he wasn't getting the 3.9s that I was getting as an English major and I think he pretty much wanted to kill me for plastering our refrigerator with my A's and my letters from the Dean. So what I'm saying is that Facebook is now my refrigerator and all of my friends are like a bunch of first husband engineers who would hate me for crowing about my good grades. So like I was saying, I'm really proud of my self-restraint and how much I've matured since I was in my twenties.
Either that, or it's just that now there are things such as blogs and I can inflict my ego on the internets and leave my poor family alone. Okay. I'm not really leaving my poor family alone because I may have run up to my bedroom and pumped my fist and did a little dance of victory for my husband after I finished my paper. And then I told him how awesome I was.
Feel free to send him sympathy cards.
Anyway, I think this blog post is a good representation of my state of mind right now. I'm sort of hyper and I don't know how I'm supposed to go through this emotional rollercoaster five more times before December. Anyway, I'm thinking about writing a book about the Stages of Grief of an Academic. Here's the outline for the first chapter:
Emotional Stages of Writing a Paper
1. Dread
2. Despair
3. Avoidance
4. Resignation
5. Panic
6. Fatigue
7. Hope
8. Mania
Does anyone have any left over Halloween candy? I think I need a sugar buzz. Whoo!
