Headlong Into the Mouth of Hell, Part I

Fall semester: day thirty-two

Today marks the start of a very long month of work/school for me, and because of that it probably also marks the start of a lot less blog posts here on a regular basis. Over the course of the next three weeks or so, I have these things to do:

1. Write at least three full papers (and a few smaller ones)
2. Grade one set of student papers, return them, and collect a second set
3. Read three full novels, roughly
4. Calculate and post my students' midterm grades
5. Study for and take a "midterm exam" in my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course
6. Attempt to get the car worked on/fixed before it gets too cold to do so
7. Prepare something new every week for my Poetry Workshop
8. Do all the readings I can for said workshop
9. Stay on a fixed budget so that I don't run myself out of money paying rent/bills
10. Figure out if anyone's doing anything for Halloween and whether I can participate
11. Ready my poetry book for publication
12. Ready a prospectus for at least one, if not two of the aforementioned papers
13. And any other odds-and-ends that come up.

I'm pretty sure Thursday the 13th is the date I'll have to take the midterm exam. That's nine days from now, which means in class on Thursday night our professor will more than likely give us the questions for study purposes. The exams in his classes aren't especially difficult (they're essay tests) but still require a fair amount of "study time," especially when it comes to knowing the source material (read: the novels covered in class). I'm not as concerned about the exam as I am the papers in that class or the papers in my Grad Studies in Fiction class. I have two papers to write in each class this semester, which means by the time December rolls around not only will I have read a combined total of about 20 books (roughly), but I will have written a combined total of around 50 pages of research papers for those two classes alone.

To put that into perspective, the poetry book I'll be publishing soon will probably only be around 50 pages total, give or take a few. It may be a little longer than that only because I'm including an author's appendix of sorts detailing the genesis of/internal meanings behind each of the poems, as I never see any poets who do that in their books.

Please note, however: this number is pretty close to the combined number of pages I wrote last fall, during my first semester of the program -- though 30 of those pages were two simple, reflective essays, and fun to write. I do have another reflective essay to write this semester, but it's for the Poetry Workshop's portfolio, and will be rather short (I think he said 750 words or so, which is about half the length of one of my normal blog posts here).

I'm not trying to sound like a whiner or anything like that; I knew what I was getting into when I entered the program, obviously, and as mentioned before -- fall semester is a nightmare for everyone. I feel bad for the new recruits, as well as people like Rae and Kay (who started in the spring), who have never had to slog through a grad student fall semester at Flat State University before. They're brutal, soul-crushing, and incredibly depressing. By the time fall semester ended last year, I was pretty close to being suicidal -- and keep in mind, back then I not only had a girlfriend but a lot more money than I have now, as well as the hopes that the holiday season would be fun and full of presents, good food, and surprises. This holiday season, all I have to look forward to is the cold, and the ability to actually get some quality sleep uninterrupted by shit I have to do or classes I have to attend and teach.

Really, this is my not-so-subtle way of telling you that until all of this shit gets done and everything calms down somewhat, I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to write here, or to do anything else that doesn't pertain to work and school. I'll try to write as much as I can, but I just don't see it happening a lot unless, for some reason, something catastrophically good or catastrophically bad happens over the course of the month of October.

On that note, as always on Tuesday mornings, I must pack up and make the slog to campus.