Friday, December 16, 2011

crafty aspirations

1 final exam, 2 presentations, and 4 massive papers? Check. The first semester of grad school is donezies. I put a lot of effort forth with most of the assignments...however, with one of them I decided to follow a motto I'd heard from a friend working on her Ph.D.:

The best dissertation is a finished dissertation.


So, laziness aside, everything's done - YAY! And that means I get to turn my attention to Christmas shopping and Christmas crafting. I made some adorable and delicious-smelling presents for my family, and I only had a few minor fails...such as:


Oh well. It's the thought that counts, right?

Friday, December 2, 2011

finals

In short, this is a particularly un-fun time of the semester. I've got 4 massive papers, 2 presentations, and 1 final exam. Thus far, I've completed 1 presentation, and written pretty solid drafts of 2 papers. But I've got a lot to do before December 15th at 5pm (when my last paper is due).

I'm currently working on a paper for a class that was cross-listed between English and Curriculum & Instruction. I seriously doubt that I will ever take another cross-listed course that isn't between two education-y fields. Even though I was an English major in undergrad, this course is focusing on a specific field within English -- which I have almost zero background in (and actually, had never even heard of during my undergrad days -- it's a new concentration at U of I). Thus, I'm having a pretty hard time figuring out how to do the research required for the literature review section of my paper. I like to work hard and figure things out, but it's quite tricky to learn the mechanics of a whole field in one semester -- much less to know the literature base so you can utilize it in a paper. Ugh. I think I'm becoming incoherent. Can we just fast-forward to December 15th at 5:01pm?