Graduation cannot come soon enough

“Listen. If you start crying when you give your presentation, she’ll feel sorry for us and give us extra points.”

I’m in a bit of a whirlwind right now. Wednesdays always are crazy. Edit, write, prepare, teach, edit, run, church, etc.

Our class is going to munity by the end of this week, I’m sure. We’re all going crazy. We have (now) less than 24 hours to make about 200 corrections to our papers. Given to us last night, due tonight.

“Did you cry?”
“No, but I did tear up. It was completely natural, too, after she said we basically had to redo our paper.”
“Well, I hope she saw.”

Here’s the dilemma we’re all facing. We had to create a research project. Do a literature review of it. Create a survey. Have survey approved (which was a disaster in itself). Hand survey out. Code survey (which by itself took over 24 cumulative hours of straight work – no playing around). Interpret results of coding. Discuss in our paper.

In less than a month.

“I don’t mean to discourage your group, but, as this paper is, it will never been accepted by a conference.”
“Oh, you’re not discouraging us. We’re okay with that.”

When I discussed this project with a former professor of mine from my master’s program, he kind of joked with me, saying, “Well, if you hurry, you can get your paper submitted to the AMCJE (big national journalism conference) on April 1.”

He was kidding. I was not. “Actually, that’s a requirement of this class.”

He was shocked. “Oh, I was just joking! I thought this project went through the summer! You’re really supposed to have all this done in less than two weeks?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me solemnly. “Good luck.”

Oh, and we have a midterm due next week. Thanks.

“Here you go. One big stupid paper. All 91 pages of it.”

I explained to my professor that the section of the conference we’re submitting our paper in will not accept papers over 25 pages (because she said ours was too short). Ours was 22 pages. She said that didn’t matter. Then, not 10 minutes later, she told another group that their 59 page paper had to be cut down because the section they’re submitting their paper in will not accept papers over 25 pages.

People, I know I’m not a brilliant person, but, seriously, how does that make sense?????

So instead of going to my evening class as anticipated, me and everyone else who is in both of the classes, skipped. We had to. We had to get this stuff done.

Apparently, judging from the 20 e-mails that flooded my inbox this morning, our 91-page paper is not enough. My two group partners are meeting with our professor again today.

“I get off work at 12. I e-mailed K to see if she could meet. No e-mail from her yet. But I am free after 12.”
“See you at 12pm. My schedule is tight as well, but I put priority on this research project with you.”

Four weeks until the end of the semester is SO not soon enough.