Rough drafts for both papers due next Wednesday (and they are very rough) are done. I will revise this weekend around the Parents’ Weekend events, go to Rhinebeck on Sunday, and hopefully have both final drafts knocked out by Monday so that I can pack for SAFF. I am super proud of myself that both rough drafts are longer than they need to be, which bodes well for what will remain after cuts and revisions.
And now, I’m going to try to get to bed before 2 AM for the first time in a week.
I try not to take more than one day a week off of the blogging these days. Because if you take two off, soon enough it leads to three, and we have seen what happens then, it’s a slippery slope and six months later everyone is all “Didn’t she used to have a blog?”
But tonight, in between rounds of Plants vs. Zombies (you’re going to hate me for that if you click it), I am trying to knock out the rough draft of my historiographical lit review for the Vietnam colloquium, wherein I discuss why some people are hating on the idea of M*A*S*H as being about Vietnam. I have discussed two sources now, and it’s 11 PM, so I don’t foresee it getting done tonight like I had planned, but hey, I’m on page two of a 5-7 page paper. It ain’t all bad. I am skimping on the class reading this week though, and I feel a little guilty about that, particularly since I will be missing class entirely next week to be among my knitterly tribe in Asheville.
But I couldn’t disappoint my four readers (that counts you, Andrew). See how much I love you guys?
From the last post, I see that Vince and I are not alone in this student thing…well, I knew that actually, because I have a ton of friends from Ravelry that are doing advanced degrees now, too, probably because of the economy. But anyway, I realized that there are a lot of us for whom the online learning portion of our degrees is brand new. I did an MFA about ten years ago, and at that point the computer was still just for typing your papers and procrastinating, and not a lot in between. When I started this MA last fall, I was amazed to see how far the internet has come. I can literally sit in my jim-jams at 3 AM and do legitimate research on the computer. For my M*A*S*H historiographical essay alone, I downloaded about 12 PDFs of articles from various sources, and you would be amazed at the primary source material for Vietnam that is also available on the web. Additionally, several of my profs have utilized a program called Blackboard to post readings for our classes, either in the form of PDF of eBook. Ten years ago, that stuff would have been a thick course pack of xeroxes from our campus printer. It’s kind of incredible, if you think about it, but people who grew up with this kind of learning (like my pseudostepkids) are just blase about it, and those of us who grew up before it often have no idea about what’s out there.
Today, my fellow students, I give you a time-saving present that one of my classmates gave me. It’s called BibMe.org, and while that sounds dirty, it is in fact, awesome. Basically, it generates bibliographies for you in most of the research format (MLA, APA, Chicago Manual of Style, etc.). You either enter the publication information about the sources you use manually or use BibMe’s search feature to locate the information, then tell it which format you want to use, and it generates your bibliography for you, which can then be exported to Word. Now, it has its shortcomings, mainly because it’s pretty meat and potatoes. It does not account for any fancy circumstances, like editor as author, or issue number only (rather than volume). But what I’ve done for both of the papers I’ve been working on this weekends is this: enter the basic stuff on BibMe (or use the search feature, which works better for books than for journal articles), generate a basic bibliography, and then export it to Word and tweak for the fancy circumstances there. It is not a miracle worker, but it is a time-saver, and I think I love it. Maybe you will, too.
I was one of those kids who was in love with my own handwriting from a very young age (I say this like it’s a common phenomena. It is, right?). I sometimes think I started writing stories just because it allowed me to fill up whole pages with my handwriting. To this day, even though so much of my job is handwritten, I still feel that way. I take my class notes by hand, even now that I have the option of using a laptop. I have always taken notes and written outlines for papers out, and I have a stack of 5″x7″ index cards for the express purpose of doing Thesis, Argument, Structure, Evidence summaries for each source I use when I write papers.
Last night, a bit pressed for time, I decided it would be faster to just type all of my notes into Word. I got a sense of accomplishment out of it that I hadn’t expected and was really jazzed when I realized that I had eleven pages of notes, double spaced, and the paper itself was only supposed to be five pages, double spaced. This morning, I realized something even more awesome. By taking my notes on the computer last night, I had put myself into the mode of phrasing the concepts as I might do in the paper. Which meant, of course, that I could just copy and paste those things directly into my paper. Obviously, I was never meant for a career in rocket science since it took me this long to figure out something so completely obvious, but oh my god, INSTANT FIRST DRAFT!!! Well, maybe not instant, since I still had to write the connections between the sources I was discussing as well as an intro and conclusion, but pretty damned close to instant! And that is how I started “writing” my first draft at 9:00 this morning and have a first draft done at 4:oo, even with food breaks and a subsequent America’s Next Top Model break.
Because of the way the question I was writing about it phrased (as in, it’s about two completely different aspects of slavery), I will have to really make the intro and conclusion work, but the rough draft was done in seven hours, and it’s onto the top of the seventh page. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a paper that went over the page limit set by the professor, or when I had a rough draft completed a week and a half before it was due (I think the reason for that is because neither one has ever happened.) I am feeling very accomplished, and totally guilt-free about going to the Lincoln Center DJ performance tonight. I just hope I can keep this roll up for the rest of the weekend, because it will make our trip to see Amelia at Harvard next weekend so much more enjoyable if all I have to worry about are minor tweaks.
I shouldn’t be as proud of this as I am, but according to the calendar in the sidebar, I have officially been back to blogging for a month now. And according to the dropdown archives thing in the sidebar, this is the most I have blogged in a month since early 2008.
This concludes the self-congratulatory part of this post.
As the two of you reading this (damn, the number of people reading blogs has really taken a hit, hasn’t it?) can tell, I’m also trying out new themes for the blog. I wasn’t happy with what I had before because there were too many options I had no idea how to use, and I’m not quite happy with this one either, because there are too few. Theoretically, I could go back to the old one and actually learn how to use it, but that does not fit into the five minute plan, because I would then spend all day doing that instead of working on papers. And since I have not worked on said papers at all today, I should just give up for the day and do that. So I will.
This concludes the Julie’s personal musings about the nature of this blog part of the post. It also concludes the post.
I had a little argument on the bus this morning. I was quietly reading, doing research for the M*A*S*H paper. Now, the reading was on M*A*S*H, yes, but it was not exactly fluff reading. It was a social history of America, showing how M*A*S*H followed the basic trends that were shaping American society at the time. It involved a little concentration to annotate it so I can come back later and take notes (library book, otherwise I would be taking notes in the margins).
Onto the bus comes a guy in his early to mid 20s, and at first I thought the blaring music accompanying him was his cell’s ringtone. After a minute, it was still going, and I realized he was using his phone to play music. I do not have a problem with this on the street, but on any type of mass transit, it clearly says “No radios.” I realize his cell phone is not a radio, but basically that means, “Don’t play music without headphones.” The tinny rasta music (his phone speaker was crap) went on for about five minutes, and I could see that people all around me were getting annoyed, too. I couldn’t concentrate on my reading, and with these papers looming over me, every second counts. I decided to speak up.
“Excuse me, sir.” No response. “Excuse me, sir.” Again, ignoring me. I know he could hear me because he’s not wearing headphones. “Excuse me, sir, would you mind turning the music down?”
This got a response. “I don’t need to turn my music down, I paid to get on this bus!”
“I understand that, but it’s loud and making it difficult to concentrate. I’m trying to study on my way to school.”
“I paid to get on this bus!”
It went downhill from there. I told him that I had also paid to get on the bus, and actually, so had everyone else on the bus, but that didn’t give him the right to blare music. He decided that I didn’t like rasta, and I told him that wasn’t the case, I just didn’t like rasta blaring on the bus while I was trying to study, why didn’t he use headphones if he wanted to listen to the music at a loud volume. He made comments about how if I wanted to study something, I could study his music, and told me to shut up, that I shouldn’t be talking. He then went back to his “I paid to get on this bus” refrain. Finally I said, “Look, paying to get on this bus doesn’t mean you get to blare music. Your point is moot.”
“But I paid to get on this bus!”
“So did I. Your point is moot.”
I’m pretty sure he didn’t understand what that meant, because he didn’t have a comeback for it, but I didn’t much care. To argue with me, he had turned the volume down on his phone, and I went back to reading. He got off a couple of stops later and informed me that he was leaving, and I could now enjoy my book. I should have applauded, but continued to ignore him. And then the bus lapsed back into quiet.
Most days I don’t mind commuting on mass transit. It gives me time to read and study, after all. But when you’re commuting, you’re in a confined space with other people, and you need to respect those people’s rights along with your own. If you’re impinging on my rights, I’m going to call you on it, because I do not suffer fools…at all.
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.
After the rain passed on Friday, Mother Nature decided to fuck with us some more and suddenly it’s fall! It’s so cold that I had the windows closed all weekend, and I wore socks, long jimjams, and a hoodie at all times in the house. Then today, I wake up to find it raining again and the predictions are that it will last until Wednesday (do not tell me meteorology is scientific, not a prediction–otherwise they wouldn’t get the forecast wrong so much). After a summer of extreme heat, I have come to two conclusions: either Al Gore is right and climate change is here and will be here for the rest of our lives, or Mother Nature is just a cruel bitch. Those are the only two options, people. And I’m not really liking what either of them portends for this winter.
I know some people think gift cards are totally impersonal, but I flat out love them. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting gifts as well, especially if someone has put some thought into them or found something so quirky it makes me laugh out loud–for instance, Jordana got me the second season of True Blood on Blu-Ray with the idea that we will have more Girls’ Nights where we just watch True Blood and drink. Lori got me (among other things) a coffee mug with the bottom of Abe Lincoln’s face on the side so that when you drink out of it, your eyes are visible on Lincoln’s face, which makes me crack up every time I look at it.
However, gift cards are awesome as well because they mean I get to indulge in retail therapy. And boy did I this weekend. I had gotten two Amazon gift cards, a Barnes & Noble gift card, and an iTunes gift card. I parlayed that into the fifth season of Doctor Who (pre-ordered), the pair of black wellies I mentioned in the last post, a book on M*A*S*H for my Vietnam paper, M*A*S*H the movie on DVD, and six CDs (three actual CDs, three on iTunes): Vampire Weekend, Keane, Band of Horses, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, and Neon Trees. That is a serious amount of shopping! And it didn’t stop there because I also hit Urban Outfitters and Gap. Twice. And Gap.com. It is not my fault that they were having a 30% off sale for cardholders this weekend. It is not my fault that Gap makes the most comfortable jeans leggings in the universe. It is not my fault that apparently everyone in Manhattan is a size 8 like I am, which meant that when I hit the second Gap last night, they looked like they had been hit by a plague of size 8 locusts, meaning that I had to go fitting room diving to find a pair of dark rinse jeans leggings. It was the perfect shopping storm, and when I realized that they did not have the grey jeans leggings that I also wanted, I had to go online. PS, they’re out of them online, too (I am really unsure as to how that happens), and a lot of what I wanted was backordered, but my 30% discount meant I ordered it anyway. I will just be receiving fun packages for a while.
And I will need to go to Gap again next week because FSM help me, those grey jeans leggings will be MINE.
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