Aftermath Prep

The agenda book fills up with my
semester outline. Yes, that is a fist bump
sticker for my last weekend  of comps.

It was a year ago that I learned a valuable lesson: take a little time to clean my desk off and prepare for the new spring semester. I remember last year I did not do this, and assignments and readings started to pile on and I was left with a dining room table desk that was in shambles. This time, however I remembered that awful experience and despite spending almost the entire weekend working on my comprehensive exams (first portion done!) I did make time Sunday evening to get ready for this new semester, which starts today officially at 4:10pm because that is when I have my first class.

How do I get ready? I write down every assignment that is due in my agenda book. And I read over my syllabi for each class. Then I ponder what this semester might look like for me. As I may have mentioned previously, I am dropping my course load down to two classes this semester. One reason for this is the simple issue of timing; I don't want to get too far ahead in my credits then start "running out" and my worst nightmare, I'm not ready to take the leap of preparing my dissertation proposal. So, yes, timing. The other reason I am hitting the breaks in my coursework is because I have two research projects I am going to be diving into. The first is left over from my independent study with Roger, and I plan to pick that back up in the coming weeks. I have all of the permissions I need from what is called the internal review board (who say that "yes, your research won't hurt anybody so go ahead and ask your questions") and most everything else, so now I just need to do some data collection. Easier said than done. The second project is from a proposal I wrote late last year for some individual funding. I kind of threw the proposal together in part just for practice - then I got word that I got some funding for it, and voila! Super excited! But voila! Now I'm freaked out that I don't know what I'm doing. A familiar feeling that will find some friends this semester when I take two classes I am completely stoked about: a qualitative methods class, and an organizational change and social stratification class.