obligatory where-the-hell-have-you-been post
I've been sitting right here, actually. I read all your blogs, I swear. Sometimes I even comment. But every single bit of my brain energy has been devoted to work, seminars, thesis proposal writing, comprehensive exam studying, and teaching. That's not the exact order, but it's darn close. Everything will ease up on November 11th around noon—that's when comprehensive exam part II will be over.
So here's the bullet list:
* work: It's work. It's actually fine (unlike this same time last year) because with the exception of one big project completely under our control, there's just a lot of fluffy stuff for me to do each day ("fluffy" in that it requires little thought on my part).
* seminars: I still love them. I'm still not a fan of poetry, but I love the poetry seminar. I haven't done much on my seminar project besides gather all my research into a pile, but at least it's something. I had two presentations in the class last week, and they went fine. In my composition studies class, I've thought of a topic for my seminar project and it's nothing at all related to computers. Hooray!
* thesis proposal writing: I'm working on it as we speak. I have a large pile of stuff, so the annotated bibliography portion is taking the longest to do. I told my thesis director I'd have a rough draft of the proposal to him tomorrow, so I shall. Note the term "rough," which is why I'm not freaking out about it or anything.
* comprehensive exam studying: Our group has ramped up to twice-weekly meetings, and we met yesterday morning for a few hours. We're firmly into the 18th Century, but thankfully an American or two were on the reading list so it wasn't all English authors, all the time like it has been. We're meeting again tomorrow. I have to talk about
Tristram Shandy for the group.
* teaching: I still love my class. They have an in-class essay tomorrow (description), during which time I will be reading
Tristram Shandy.
Labels: gradschool, life
