Another One Bites the Dust

The squirrels were so excited about the end of
the semester they frolicked in our backyard snow

Semester over! Practically. I have one more paper to turn in that is just about done, and since it's for an independent study and I am folding it into my dissertation proposal I don't feel pressure. Rather more encouragement that I'm making progress on my proposal. So another semester bites the dust. Last week was finals week (which means nothing to me because I don't have finals), and Erickson building where the College of Education is was pretty much empty. I really love the closing of a semester. Despite having to get all last assignments in and the flurry of tidying up last paragraphs, conclusions, findings sections, etc., it always is a good feeling to end a semester. And the first morning of the first weekend after it finishes I always have a strange feeling, like I did this morning. That feeling is "what am I going to do?"

I get in a habit of waking up early each morning and starting to write immediately. I work best in the morning and even just 45 minutes of writing each day gets me pretty far on papers. This semester I almost completed writing an entire manuscript. And by writing an entire manuscript I mean taking all the data I collected over the summer, transcribing a total of 20 hours of talking (and transcribing means for every 1 hour of listening to tape, it takes me about 3 hours to type it out), writing a literature review, analyzing the data, and then writing it all up. It's the first piece of empirical work done I've from start to finish alone, and I admit I'm quite proud. I got some good feedback from my professor, and after I fix a few things I'll have my advisor read it and then I'll get it ready to send it off into the world for a reviewer at a journal to shred it to pieces. Right now, however, I savor the end of the semester, getting a solid draft of a single-authored manuscript completed, and watching the snow fall outside as I prepare to watch Netflix for a few hours to decompress.