One more paper to go

The portfolio is finished! And I passed! So that's cool.

But now I'm struggling immensely with this last paper I have to write. It's 20 page research paper and although the topic is closely related to my Selected Questions paper I keep hitting these walls. Basically, this paper just doesn't want or need to be 20 pages. I'm stuck at 13 right now, and I know I have more to say but I'm just not sure what more I have to say or how I want to say it. I'm also not wordy. I believe in the economy of language, why say something in 20 pages when I can get my point across in 15?

I think my main problem is that I have mentally checked out of this whole school thing, but this paper is preventing me from really doing that.

Three weeks...

Portfolios are due in three weeks. I can't even think of a fraction or percent "done" to call mine because it's not any fraction or percent done. The pieces I've written will most likely all need to be rewritten/ heavily revised. So that means it's serious crunch time. NO FUN FOR THREE WEEKS! Maybe a little fun, but not as much fun as I've been having. Which is a lot of fun. Why does grad school have to ruin all my fun?

Oh yeah, and after the anxiety of portfolio wears off, I'll have the new anxiety of having to find a real job! YESSS!!!

Basically, OMG FML!!!

(Yes, I am about to have a masters degree from Penn, [hopefully]. Yes, I am about to lose my mind.)

losing my damn mind

So, maybe I should't have put off starting this paper until a week before it was due.

The major problem I'm having, besides balancing on the brink of seriously fucking losing it, is that I didn't do enough research or gather any sources prior to actually writing the damn thing. So as I've been writing I've been scrambling through books, folders, course blackboard sites and notebooks to try and back up some of these crazy ideas I have. The thing is that I can absorb a lot of ideas and information, but I don't always remember where I got this stuff from... so tracking it down is tricky. Especially when I'm simultaneously writing the paper that is due in less than seven days. So far I've written four pages of repetitive, unfocused ramblings. I don't even want to go back and reread what I've written, it's that bad. (any volunteers for that horrible task?)

The good news is I got comments back on the other draft I handed in at the beginning of September and they were overall very positive ("This is a strong paper, with thoughtful discussions in every section"). I hope she is not expecting that much from this next paper, because it is not looking too good right now. At least I know I did a good job on the first one so if/when this next one is complete crap I won't feel like a total failure.

Leave some love and encouragement in the comments?

motivation fail

I haven't posted here in a while and if you're wondering why (who reads this) that's because I haven't done shit for this portfolio since I sent in the first draft of my conceptual territories paper. It's not like I'm incredibly busy with very important things to the point that I can't write a 1-2 page reflection on something-or-other. I just don't want to.

My selected questions were approved by my advisor. Want to know what they are? Too bad, I'm going to write them down here anyway:

1) How can we connect students' out-of-school literacy practices with school literacies? what knowledge/practices are transferable (in either direction)?

2) What is/ should be the role of out-of-school and non-school programs related to literacy?

At least that's what I sent to my advisor. I'm sure I will come up with more questions when I eventually start writing the thing and that these questions will evolve and change somewhat. I have all kinds of grand ideas for this paper, but I have yet to write anything down, open a book, or do a damn thing besides think about it occasionally. The first draft is due in 9 days, so I should probably, um, get started.

draft one is done

Is it really done if it's a draft? Whatever. I just sent the draft of my conceptual territories paper to my advisor so it's done for now and I refuse to think about it again until she gets back to me with her feedback. It was slightly longer than 12 pages (like 3 lines over) which means if anything I'll have to cut stuff, which is more fun than adding stuff. The hardest part about this paper was narrowing my thinking. There is SO much I've read and could say about these four thing and figuring out what I wanted to say the most and fitting it into a 12 page paper was really difficult. There were things I started to write about that I would have liked to write more about, but couldn't really because of the nature of the paper. But I'm done with it, for now at least.

Next up is the Selected Questions paper. And all those little annoying reflection papers.

what happened to my motivation?

I finally managed to look at my conceptual territories again since I've gotten feedback from my writing group. Only took a week to get to this point. I have to send my draft to my portfolio advisor Thursday and I just can't make myself actually work on it. There is a stack of things I want to read and I can't get myself to do that either. It's not like I'm doing anything really cool or fun instead. Why am I so unmotivated?

I'm also really annoyed that as soon as this draft is "done" I need to start working on the next one. I just got my "selected questions" approved by my other advisor and I'm probably more interested in writing about those than writing about conceptual territories. But right now the thought of it makes me want to go hide out in cave somewhere or something.

All I can say is that I better get a damn job after this.

battling this first draft

A big problem I have with writing long-ish papers is the fact that I at some point have to go back and read what I wrote. I hate doing this because I usually only notice how stupid I sound. So it's good that I have this writing group, because they can read it for me and tell me how much it doesn't make sense and I can fix things without tirelessly re-reading my ramblings so much.

I need to email my group a draft of my paper today, and it is nowhere near ready for human consumption. I just opened the document and sort of shuddered because I didn't even want to look at the thing. I know what I want to write about, sort of, but actually doing it is a struggle. Searching through the jumble of words I've already written to find the perfect spot to insert whatever new thought entered my brain while I was unable to fall asleep. But I am working on it.

Portfolio-ing

I stopped blogging here for some reason. I could say I've been too busy with school, but that wouldn't be entirely true. But I can say that now I plan to post somewhat regularly and with a purpose! You see, I'm going to be finishing my masters program in December and an essential step in doing that is completing and presenting my "Learning Portfolio" so I can prove that I've learned what they wanted me to learn in the program and it wasn't a complete waste of everyone's time.

I won't bore you (or myself) with the details, but basically the portfolio consists of two long papers (12 pages) and several short papers/reflections. We have to send drafts of our longer papers to our portfolio advisers a predetermined times, and the first one is due September 1.... which is very soon. This first paper is about the "Conceptual Territories" of the Reading/Writing/Literacy program, which are: interdisciplinarity (not even a real word), inquiry, diversity and change. How vague, right?

I've been trying to tackle each conceptual territory at a time and I've got inquiry, diversity and change started in a way that almost makes sense. I've been struggling with interdisciplinarity because what does that even mean?

I have a little over a week to figure it out and put it all together, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Oh, and I've got this kitten now and she tries to eat all my books/pens/post-its. It's cute half of the time.

Philadelphia in the springtime

I didn't update this blog all winter because winter was kind of miserable. But now it's kinda-sorta spring-ish outside! I saw flowers today! However, now that it's getting warmer and the snow has melted the trash that has accumulated over winter is clearly visible. Our "front yard" is basically a trash heap. I'd like to clean it up, but I don't want to catch anything. I need one of those litter poker-grabber things or some good rubber gloves.

I don't know if this picture really does justice to the amount of trash flying around. This is the island at the corner of Baltimore and Springfield. It's truly disgusting.

Although I did see a couple people picking up litter today as I was walking home from my fieldwork.

Hopefully I'll have more to share as things warm up. This semester has been pretty intense and I don't have time to do much. Technically it's spring break right now, but I have so much work to do it's basically just a week-off-from-classes with no less school work to do.