Friday I went to CMU for the third time in a week. Normally I only go twice a week, but this time was special. John Grogan, author of Marley & Me (and a CMU journalism alum), was giving two talks taht I planned to attend. There were two reasons for this: 1) I liked his book and I love hearing author’s talk and 2) It could net me 5 percent extra credit in a class where I’ve received more B+ grades than I care to acknowledge.
(You know you need extra credit when the prof says to you after class something along the lines of, "Linda, you have such great comments in class. You obviously understand this stuff, but it’s not showing up in your writing…..")
In between Grogan talks, I met with my adviser to talk about next semester and my thesis work. Let me just say that little about what I planned to do for this has been possible. Ideally, I want to complete my thesis next semester and graduate in May. My professor told me December is more likely.
Why? Because of all the other things that go with thesis work. You have to be done by week 10 out of the 16-week semester in order to allow for your work to be read and defended. I could possible extend that into the summer, but the department is trying to end summer thesis work because it’s hard to locate people. That leaves me the December semester for graduation, 2007. No!!!
Keep in mind my thesis work is a nonfiction memoir I’ve been working on since last January. I just need to get it done, edited and etc. So I’m thinking I am going to try to write as much as I possibly can between now and January. I want to have just the editing to do for that 10 weeks. That would let me still graduate by May, but it sounds like my adviser isn’ t for that. We’ll see.
I also need to get people to agree to be on my thesis committee. I have the chair down, but I need to ask committee members. I have some people picked out and hopefully it works out. Why does it have to be so hard? Not the writing — the school stuff.
In other news, I am trying to keep up with my reading for classes and my grading for the classes I teach. Needless to say, I am reading more than I’ve ever read before and keep in mind I’ve always read a lot. For instance, this week I’m reading two 150-page books PLUS 40 portfolios from students. Not to mention another 40 impromtu essays. The books should be simple, but they are academic in nature and while I can read a normal book in 24 hours, I find myself falling asleep reading these. They aren’t boring, so much as reading them is mentally taxing. I can only take so much at a time.
Back to my reading. Thanks for playing.
