Image via WikipediaI've spent the last few minutes trying to decompress from finishing my paper, and I can tell that I'm probably not going to get to sleep just yet (only one class today, at 12:30PM, so I may get a nap before then). I was thinking about the peer review I got on my draft (a bunch of useless, single-word answers to analytic questions), which made me think about the paper I reviewed. The guy who wrote it (and who reviewed my draft) always shows up to class, but he doesn't take any notes, and his draft was only around 5 pages long. It made mine look like a masterpiece -- his thesis made no sense (the topic was sustainability) and wasn't arguable, as far as I could see. After that was introduced, if you can call what he had an introduction, he had a bunch of random quotations (from people he didn't introduce), and he didn't discuss them at all, just went on to making some points-- or trying to.
It made me crazy: after 8 weeks of researching and thinking and writing, this was the best he could do? It was supposed to be a second or third draft, but it barely qualified as prewriting. How does he think he's going to pass the course. From now on, every time I think that I'm getting obsessive about school, I am going to remember him as the perfect example of how not to succeed.
Image by Picture_taking_fool via FlickrThe research paper is due today, and I just finished mine. I uploaded it to the course page at 4:45AM, which makes me a sort of cliché, I suppose. I'm not sure it's everything I wanted it to be, but I can't see what else to do to it. I revised it as Dr. Toffee instructed, and I proofread and polished until I was sick of it, so I guess I'll have to hope that it's good enough. I think I made my point.
While it's a big relief to have it done, it just occurred to me that I have not done my journal entries for the last couple of weeks, and I need to get going on bringing them up to date. There's only two more weeks until the end of the semester, and I'll need to do at least one a day. Why do I always let myself get so far behind? It just makes for more stress, which I don't need.
Image by scatterkeir via FlickrAfter I drafted the lit review, I started drafting the analysis, and I discovered that my review wasn't working. The problem was that I kept talking about things that weren't relevant to the analysis of the two films. For example, I spent a lot of time covering the problem of stigma in the literature (terrific material from Linton and Goffman) even though I'm not really seeing that much of what my sources are describing. So, I've already had to revise that section, plus a couple of other things, and I still don't have a complete draft (I've got seven pages I'm happy with, so far). I'm hoping to reach the conclusion today.
One good thing is that Dr. Toffee doesn't want us to write an introduction with the draft, so I think I'll be able to submit a full-enough draft for her comments on Tuesday.
Image via WikipediaI've spent the last few minutes trying to decompress from finishing my paper, and I can tell that I'm probably not going to get to sleep just yet (only one class today, at 12:30PM, so I may get a nap before then). I was thinking about the peer review I got on my draft (a bunch of useless, single-word answers to analytic questions), which made me think about the paper I reviewed. The guy who wrote it (and who reviewed my draft) always shows up to class, but he doesn't take any notes, and his draft was only around 5 pages long. It made mine look like a masterpiece -- his thesis made no sense (the topic was sustainability) and wasn't arguable, as far as I could see. After that was introduced, if you can call what he had an introduction, he had a bunch of random quotations (from people he didn't introduce), and he didn't discuss them at all, just went on to making some points-- or trying to. 
