Fall semester: day seventy-six
This is post #100 on the new, 2.0 version of this blog. Happy Blogiversary, or what-have-you. Figured that was worth mentioning in some respect or another.
I just realized that counting the entirety of finals week, there are only nine days of the semester remaining. I guess that means the semester consists of eighty-five days from start to finish (weekdays, of course, are the only ones being counted, and yes, breaks like Thanksgiving and Fall Break are counted too).
It seems like it's longer than that if you think about it, but really I guess it isn't.
Yesterday was one of those "do little, but accomplish a lot" sort of days for me. It's strange how things work out sometimes. Most of what I did was paperwork, pun intended -- I graded a round of rewritten essays and a few new ones, critiqued through the last poetry packet for workshop, and read about 100 pages of Anil's Ghost, the last novel we have to read for the Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course.
When it came to the latter, when I was about 90 pages deep into that 100-page reading, I came to the realization that, wait for it, I wasn't going to be tested on this material. Not really. Let me explain.
The final exam for that class is an essay test. It's also very similar to the midterm exam, which I wrote about here at length before -- however, the final is different. Before the midterm, we'd read three novels. We, therefore, had to write an essay on each of those three novels, and in class the week prior we wrote the questions ourselves. For the final, it will definitely be different. We've read five novels since the midterm was given, and there's no way we can write five essays in the time we're given for the exam, so our professor has told us basically that we'll have five questions and can choose from three of them.
This is similar to how he handled the final in the British Modernism class I took with him in the spring as well, for those of my friends who did not have the pleasure of taking that class with me.
Anyway, I don't know whether or not we'll be writing the questions for the final exam in this class as well, but it boils down to the fact that we only have time for three regardless. Which means, if he follows the same procedure with the exams he usually does, there are two books I won't have to write on at all if I choose not to.
This is good, because Anil's Ghost may be a fast read, but to me most of it is fucking boring, and I don't have the patience or desire to finish reading it. Yes, I can appreciate a good novel, but after this hellish semester of wall-to-wall work, I'm burned out on reading anything I don't absolutely have to read. Same goes for finishing Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler as well for my Fiction class -- I'm not going to be tested on it, there's no final in that class, and my final paper is already turned in. Theoretically, my grade in there is already set in stone once the aforementioned paper is graded, so why should I work extra to finish reading a book I didn't really enjoy in the first place? The last class will consist of little more than discussion, and I already know how the book ends.
Anyway. Back to the final for the Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course.
So, if there's only three questions on the final, I only really need to know in-depth information on the three books I choose to write on. Anil's Ghost is the only book I haven't read cover-to-cover for the class, so I'm fine there, and could probably write a good essay on it for an exam if I were forced to. Well, a passable one, at least. If I get bored, I'll possibly read more of it between now and Thursday night, but that also depends on how much free time I have as well when I'm not grading papers. Graduate students refer to this sort of thinking as "rationalizing reasons to be done with work." Because, theoretically, aside from my grading, I can call myself done if I so choose. I don't necessarily have to do anything else for the rest of the semester but show up, teach my classes, and grade.
To a certain extent, I feel like if I don't do anything but the bare minimum (read: see above) that I'm shirking my responsibilities or something along those lines, but there's also that voice inside my head telling me the semester is over, Brandon; just let it die. I'm trying not to let the voice of rationalization to get the better of me, but I also hate feeling like there's something I should be doing -- even if it's something I have no real reason or desire to do -- and I'm not.
To those ends, I have gone back through my Midnight's Children paper this evening (as today is the first day my professor told me I could turn it in) and have made some more minor edits now that I've had more than a week without looking at it. This not only makes me feel productive, but also lets me produce the best work possible for my professor -- it's probably the last time I'll be able to take him for the rest of my graduate school career (unless, of course, he offers a lit course in one of my final two semesters there), and I greatly admire and respect the man. Because of this, even though I already know I'll receive an A in his class and on this paper, I still want to give him the best reading experience possible -- if only because he deserves it and because I may eventually present this paper at a conference somewhere.
As an aside, I'm not going to any conferences in the spring; I have no money to do so, and most of them occur around, during, or shortly after Spring Break -- when, if I'm lucky, I'll be visiting my parents and friends back home in West Virginia. The annual PCA/ACA National Conference is in Boston this year, and as much as I'd like to go to Boston, I don't have the time or extra money to devote to it. When the former girlfriend and I presented at the last one this past spring in San Antonio, that was ungodly expensive even though we got to fly for free. It doesn't look like I'm going to be attending or presenting at any more conferences unless I somehow become independently wealthy overnight.
So, upon finishing those final edits to my Midnight's Children paper and sending it off to my professor, I now have one less thing at the end of the semester to worry about.
I do have some more grading to do tonight; SafeAssign (the university's plagiarism-checking system, used by almost all universities and colleges now) has been extremely slow over the course of the weekend, to the point where it's taking up to 48 hours or more to process papers. Obviously, I'm not grading any papers that haven't been submitted to SafeAssign, and the ones which have I've been waiting to clear the system have finally cleared it, except for two. I'm guessing it's because for many schools on the system, this is already finals week, and students are busy uploading final papers, which bogs down the system. So, once my last bits of grading are done, I'll be going to bed.
In other news, it's freezing here. The temperature didn't get above the freezing point all day, and it is clear that it's become winter -- or at least December -- in Kansas, because the wind has been whipping about all day/night too, and the wind chill is nine degrees. I really hope I can get the Monte Carlo started in the morning, and tomorrow night is definitely going to be one of those "stick the car in the garage" nights, as the temperature is supposed to drop down into the teens. It's pretty much been settled that I'll be wearing layers all week; the only question is how many. I'm really not looking forward to this sort of weather, especially when compared to the end of fall semester last year.
For those of you who don't remember the end of fall semester last year, it was almost seventy degrees during finals week. It was so nice we spent most of the afternoon after the exam throwing a football back and forth in the long stretch of grass behind the building. This year, in comparison, looks like it's going to be cold and miserable, if not snowy. We're supposed to get some snow here tonight, but nothing measurable. It hasn't started yet. I hope it passes us by. Cold is one thing, but snow is another.
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