EvilJulie.com

I was told this summer that I am a Type A personality. Since I was told this by someone who knows me fairly well (Jordana), I only said “Really?” disbelievingly once. I’ve always figured I was Type B. I do not sweat the small stuff. I’m pretty good at rolling with the punches. I do like balance and for things to work out well, but what Libra doesn’t?

Jordana rephrased herself. “You’re Type A when it comes to organization. I mean, look at the last time you moved, you had a complete roster of what was in each box, on top of labeling them for which room they went to.” Well, yes, I did, but only because the two times I’d moved before that, I lived with a level of chaos for the three months it took to unpack that wreaked havoc on my sense of balance. I preferred to think of it as learning from my mistakes.

My ability to learn from past mistakes is why, when I got home from work last night, I devised a comprehensive plan of attack for how I am going to get these freaking papers written in the next 15 shit, now it’s 14 days. It is a cohesive plan, a workable plan, and I think it even gives me time to visit Rick on his lunch hour on Friday and go to the DJ event at Lincoln Center Atrium Saturday night. I did not go into massive detail, but time has been blocked out for research, for homework reading, for note-taking, for outline writing, and for rough draft writing. And if that makes me Type A, so be it.

I still don’t think I am, though. A Type A personality totally would have figured out how many pages needed to be read on each day. And while I might have looked at how many pages the books have, I didn’t do any math to figure out the exact number of pages I should be churning out. Dislike for math trumps organization for me, so I am obviously Type B.

So the thing about doing grad school in addition to work and balancing a social calendar is this: you think you’re doing so great, getting all the reading done and summarizing theses and arguments and participating in classes, and then you suddenly realize that OH, FUCK, you have two papers due in 15 days, because you’re flying south on day 16. And by the way? Your kid’s college is having Parents’ Weekend the weekend right before said papers are due, and you know that no writing is going to occur then. Maybe, if you’re really lucky, you’ll get some revising in, but really, I wouldn’t hold your breath on that. So basically, you have 12 days in which to research and write two papers, plus do whatever homework is due for classes in the next two weeks.

I did what any sane (and panicking!) grad student who was trying to balance work, school, and a social life would do: I took Friday off. This, combined with having Monday off for Columbus Day, should buy me the time I need. As long as the homework reading for the next two weeks isn’t really long.

If I post this, it will be three posts in one week, which is the most I’ve posted…well, probably since I started this degree. Awesome, I’m on a roll! A roll that is entirely due to Rosh Hashanah and the fact that we have no classes during it. Hi, we’re in New York, Jewish holidays get figured into daily life here like they never did in Western PA.

At any rate, classes. Yeah. I’ve had two meetings of one class (a colloquium in Vietnam) and one class in Black American history because classes started on a Thursday this year and Black America meets on Wednesdays. In fact, I started classes earlier than Amelia or Sage this year, which was interesting. Amelia started a week after me, and Sage goes back on Monday, because her school figured there was no point in going back on Tuesday just to take off for Rosh Hashanah. As I said, New York City, we are in it. Sage has taken an unholy amount of glee in this, although I’m not sure she’ll feel the same when Amelia and I both have our month off in January and she’s still stuck in school. Ditto when we finish up in May and she doesn’t.

Riiiight, classes. The colloquium is demanding, as colloquiums are wont to be. We read a book a week (ranging from 200-600 pages), then come to class and have hardcore discussions with assigned roles to make sure that the discussion is lively. I prepped more for that second class than I ever have for a graduate class, just because I had a role to play, so I guess it works. We’ve got a 15-20 page research paper due at the end of the semester (topic is of our own choosing, I will touch on my proposed topic another time), and we hand in a draft of it in November. We also have to do a 4-7 page lit review of the existing works on our topic, which will incorporate into our main paper. Time consuming, yes, but I’ve done all of this before. It’s the reading which is going to be the kicker here.

The Black America course, from the one class I’ve taken, seems like it will balance out okay. Readings seem to hover at around 100 pages a week, which I can knock out on a Saturday morning, leaving the rest of the week for Vietnam readings. Because there are 25 of us in it (more than I’ve ever had in a grad class), the prof is going to do more lecture with student participation rather than student-led discussion. I am fine with this. And while we have two 5 page essays and one 15-20 page essay (due at the end of the semester) throughout our time, none of it is from outside research. It is all based on classroom readings, which is a lot like my essays for Chinese history courses were. In other words, I’m saying “I think I can” a lot. Since it’s supposed to be a “fun” degree, I could theoretically drop out at any time, but what kind of message would that send to Amelia and Sage? I’m sticking to it.

But I’m really hoping that next semester I finally get to study colonial or New York City history, which were two of the reasons I started taking this program in the first place.

Paper writing is not my favorite. I had two papers due this week, one for each class. Actually, the one that is due today wasn’t so bad as it was an interpretive paper. This is my interpretation of an interpretive paper (ha!): “Here are my primary sources. Here is what I think they mean. There is no wrong answer, because it’s interpretive. The end.” So I wrote five pages on Confucius as an innovative thinker in about five hours, not counting the time I spent writing my outline and compiling my sources. Finished late last night, I don’t think it’s all that bad, and I do believe I should get bonus points for using “Confucius said…” in the very first sentence. My paper, the five page fortune cookie.

The other paper was…well, it was rough going. Ostensibly I was working on it all weekend, but the weather gave me a serious case of depression and I had real writer’s block as a result, to the point where I was considering dropping my classes because I was convinced I wasn’t going to get the paper done and then I would fail the class and oh my god! The sense of impending doom I have when I’m depressed is unbelievable. The good thing that came out of it was that I wasn’t going to let myself sit on my ass if I wasn’t writing, so I cleaned the apartment. The only two things still left to clean are the microwave and the stovetop, because I got everything else, even the medicine cabinet. One could argue that this was a form of procrastination, and one would be partially right. On the other hand, hey, clean apartment.

I did eventually get a handle on what I was doing, largely because one of my classmates and I compared thoughts on Facebook all weekend. And when we spent Monday night’s class discussing our papers, I started to feel like I might have gotten it right (it was not an interpretive paper, so it’s harder to judge). The depression has passed with a lot of help from the beautiful weather yesterday. The thought of no more paper writing for two weeks is also a wonderful mood-lifter. I’m just not going to think about the first draft I have to crank out after that right now.