I have just two weeks left to this semester. ARGH!
Last night I gave two presentations to my class. They went well, but I am definitely feeling it is crunch time in both my own classes and those I teach.
I have a confession about the classes I teach. One of the classes is a research writing class. My students turned in rough drafts and many of the citations for more than one paper looked like this: (Source 1). As I was reading the papers, I confess I began to get irritated that the students were quoting from the first page of their sources because it indicates they didn’t do the depth of research necessary. But then I realized that wasn’t quite right. The source was usually a web site, and when the student printed it out, the page printed out as page 1. Ah! It was a citation error, and they really had done the research. It made me feel so much better.
On Friday, I meet with my thesis chairman to discuss my memoir, as well as figure out exactly when I will be doing a defense. One of my grad friends told me yesterday her chair just informed her the defense will happen in August, which means my friend will not be graduating in August. Argh! This thesis stuff, and all of the various schedules, is really frustrating.
My original plan was to graduate in May, but schedules involving thesis and defense, pushed that back to August. In order to graduate in May, I would have had to complete my thesis and defense before Mar. 23. And now, I am planning an August graduation, which means I need to have everything done by July 11. That’s everything approved and defended by that date. When I initially revised my plan, I had hoped to do my defense in early April, but that date has now passed without a defense.
When scheduling your defense, you have to schedule it at least two weeks in advance. So if on Friday, my chair and I were to agree it was time to send my manuscript to the other two committee members, it is now crunch time for the semester. I’m sure all of my committee members will be busy with finalizing the semester. And so, the earliest I could expect them to do a defense would be around May 11. I hope that works out.
There are so many ifs about the entire process. If my chairman agrees, if the schedule works for my committee members, if my committee agrees my thesis is acceptable….
If any of my committee members thinks I need to revise, it pushes everything back.
And the problem is I think I have a huge case of senioritis. I want to be DONE. I need to be DONE.
And I keep hearing horror stories. Another one of my grad friends did a “Plan B” paper, which requires two extra classes and is “easier” than a thesis process. Except he has been waiting for four weeks to hear if his plan B paper is acceptable, and now he is hearing that one reviewer says it needs to be revised.
There are TWO weeks left to the semester, and this grad friend wanted to graduate in May.
And then there are all of these busy work things that have to be done. You have to apply to graduate, and you have to submit forms, and you have to have your thesis laser printed (two copies minimum) and it needs to go through the binding process.
And when you apply to graduate, you have to realize that people can deny your application and say, “no, you have not fulfilled X requirement.” And I think I have fulfilled more than X, but it is still another big IF.
And I’m just worried that there is a big wrench just waiting to, well, do what big wrenches do.
Is it any wonder why I am not sleeping?
