It’s crunch time. I have a big paper due on Friday, but I’m determined to finish it. Tonight. Because tomorrow night I want to go play with my friends. So I promise myself that I will finish it tonight. No matter what.

But it kind of reminds me of those nights back in elementary school, high school, even college, when I had a big project due, and all I really wanted to do was go hide in a corner and cry. I’m not ready to cry just yet, but it’s only 9:30 p.m. Give me two or three hours and I’ll be seeing things a bit less clearly! If I’m still here after midnight, well, it won’t be pretty folks.

And remind me to tell you about the class I helped with tonight as part of my grad assistant position. Seeing those students made me miss my old wardrobe, which only consisted of t-shirts, flip-flops, and going out clothes. Ahh, the good old days!

Back to work.

“You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” –Chinese proverb

If my homework were a chasm, it would take a hop, a skip, a jump, and an airplane to cross. I have been buried all week, and stressed to the point where it’s almost hard to breathe. Today I hit my wall and ended up on my couch, watching all of the shows saved on my precious Tivo (including The Office, two episodes of Ugly Betty, and the presidential debate, which I have now slept through not once but TWICE). Sometimes you just have to do nothing to save your sanity. I feel much more sane now, and after a much-needed dinner with my family, I think I’ll be back to the old Bethe again.

Laugh uncontrollably. It clears the mind.
(from a Dove chocolate I ate yesterday)

Tonight I went out with my friends from grad school. I’ve had these girls in my classes for the past two semesters, and they’ve become very special friends. I think it’s like guys who pledge a fraternity… once you suffer through something together (like a research paper) you develop a bond that becomes pretty strong. I know all about their jobs, their academic interests, their relationships, their personal lives, their career goals, and their stressors. We’ve been in the trenches together.

Okay, so TCU isn’t exactly the trenches. Maybe I’m exaggerating, as usual. But we’ve cheered each other on through projects, research papers, and presentations. And they make school a heck of a lot more fun!

So tonight, as we sat around the table at Glorias, eating our Mexican food and talking about our summer vacation, we laughed. And laughed. And laughed. I can’t wait for the next big night out!

I complain a lot about grad school because it takes all my time, costs a lot of money, and makes me work hard on stuff that doesn’t necessarily always (ever) interest me.

But tonight, that first $15,000 worth of school paid off! Because…

I got swag! There’s a gal in my class who works for Pier 1, and she brought us each a bag of Pier 1 goodies! Yea! I got some candles, soap, Christmas decorations, and a beach mat, all for FREE! They’re moving offices and she had to clean out some stuff from storage, and we all got to benefit!

It was definitely the highlight of my whole semester. Maybe my whole graduate career to this point. I can’t wait to use my new lemonade-flavored soap tonight! See, all this hard work is worth it…

By the way… normally I’m a total overachiever when it comes to school. But not tonight. It’s 9:45 on a Sunday evening, I have a ton of reading to do for class tomorrow, and I’m just not in the mood. I wonder if I can just wing it?

I think instead I’ll pop two Benedryl and call it a night. I need my sleep. After all, I had an exhausting day of laying by the pool, working on my tan.

It’s bad enough that I have to spend my beautiful Sunday afternoon doing homework instead of playing flag football with my church friends… but when I downloaded and printed the 20-page article off of some random business database that I’ll have to critique (among several assignments on my list for today)… the text is so blurry I can barely read it. So I get to read 20 pages of blurry text. Thanks a lot. It’s bad enough that this will be negatively impacting my social life, but now it’s also goign to make me go blind.

So here’s my critique–if you’re going to spend a year of your life getting an article published, at least make sure it’s readable!

Boo school! Thank goodness there’s just one more week!

Am I ever too old to post a good grade on my refrigerator? That 15-page research paper (actually, HALF of a research paper, the rest is due next month) was SO hard for me to write. I felt no confidence when I turned it in… I think I always assume everybody else in the class is so much smarter than me, and once I turn in a real paper, my professor will realize I have no business being in my program. But somehow I made a 97! And I must say, I’m a little giddy!