Last Minute Mary

I don't put things off. I'm a worker-aheader, a planny-McPlannerson, an extremely-prepared kind of person. But the first 2 weeks of Fall semester this year has proved me incapable of juggling all the things I have going on. There is so much pressure at work to get the new systems up and running, and there are a plethora of meetings that I really wish I didn't need/have to attend. On the other side, I have unbelievable pressure from classwork and the added bonus of planning/researching my thesis this semester. On top of that, I, personally, have had 2 routine Dr.'s appointments, and Kyle had eye surgery yesterday. He has one more check up that will require me to drive him and miss work, and then he should be home-free for seeing well again.

Over Labor Day weekend, I had 400 pages of a dry, slow-reading novel to digest, plus 50+ pages of criticism/background, plus two essay questions due by 7am Monday morning (which was my birthday). We had 2 family reunions with 50+ people that weekend. Too much. All around, it was all just too much for me.

I thought I'd be able to get my mind back into a routine following Labor Day, but that proved impossible, and now it's Saturday and I finally feel like I can sit down and breathe for the first time in two weeks.

Last night was a due date for my general plan for writing this gigantor paper, the culmination of my grad career. Library school taught me how to research with the best of them. This English program is teaching me how to be a literary critic. And my final "test" will be a massive paper, a book even, on some literary topic of my choice. I've struggled to come up with something interesting, and was about ready to fall back on my favorite topic of female character moral development in 19th c. British lit., when I read Steph's birthday gift to me from last year, The Book Thief. It changed my perspective and made me appreciate modern fiction again. 

By yesterday, I was to turn in to my adviser a chapter outline of what I want to write on for this massive undertaking. I didn't really know how in depth I should go for this "Prospectus," but with the minimal time I had available to think about it in the 1-week time frame I was given, I thought it might end up only phrases, not even sentences, in length. I stayed late at work, after missing half the day for Kyle's surgery, and when I got home we wolfed down some food and did the mountain of dishes that had piled up since Monday evening. Then, I locked myself in the back room and began ruminating on what I wanted to say about The Book Thief and how I could make those ideas into 20 page chapters while still sounding intelligent. 

I needed to Google ideas like "death as narrator," which produced results of mostly fantastical, not-the-right-kind of books. I needed to brainstorm on physical paper the 5 different directions I could go and choose the best one (or the most interesting one to me). I needed to revisit my Critical Approaches to Literature Handbook so that I could see what criticisms might help me illuminate this text and any other works I chose to examine. As you can see, I had many decisions to make. 

In a few hours' time, I think I got it. But I'm going to wait to hear back from my adviser before giving any specifics, in case she doesn't like it and I must change directions. 

It turned out just like I thought it would...I needed two minutes to rub together (or 180 minutes, truthfully) so my brain could focus on just one thing. It felt good.