This week was the first time I felt like I might be getting the hang of this whole grad school thing. Sure, my table still looks like this….
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| This is actually updated from the last picture, and I’m pretty sure it’s gotten worse! |
And my house in general is a little messier than I like it to be. And I haven’t tried any new recipes since my mom left town a couple of weeks ago. And I did only get three hours of sleep the night before my first grad school presentation on Wednesday.
But I left that presentation feeling hopeful. My presentation went well. I got great feedback. My teacher told me I got an A on it. And my professor and I had a great conversation about my research interests after class. In preparing for the presentation, I had to dig up an old paper from undergrad that I used for my writing sample for my grad school applications. I can’t believe I even got accepted to any grad school!!! I mean how gracious that they would accept me based on my measly writing sample. For example, I have learned over the past six months that a typical bibliography for a standard 10-20 page research paper should be one to two pages long. That means you would read anywhere from 10-20 books and articles to gain background for your paper. My writing sample had like five sources on its bibliography and one of them was something I grabbed off the internet simply to add a quote to my introduction. Pitiful.
I have also learned about the word “stakes” since starting grad school… meaning what are the “stakes” of this project? Or basically what is the point of writing this paper? While many would point out that the stakes are never really that important when you are writing a paper about literature (it’s not going to change the world – although the literature itself when it was written back in the day might have actually changed the world or at least affected a certain city, state, or culture), there still has to be a reason you are writing what you are writing. How does it add to current research in your field and how is it new and different than what other people have already written? I feel like I nailed that part of my presentation this week and it felt good!
So slowly but surely I am feeling more at home at grad school and where God has called me and feeling more excited about this five to six year endeavor that I began back in July. And it wasn’t really until yesterday when I felt like things were going well that I realized how aloof I have been feeling for the past eight months. Not knowing many other students in my program well. Not knowing what to say during my grad classes but feeling pressured to say something. Not knowing how to go about researching for and writing my papers. Not really sure of I want to research and devote my whole teaching/writing career to. But yesterday, I felt those things changing slowly. I feel like I am making friends in my program and my office. I am really enjoying knowing students and teachers well on both the literature and rhetoric/composition side of things. I like the things I am studying and feel like the work I am doing has some kind of value.
AND did you notice I even blogged five times this week?!?! In the words of the Kruse siblings and all my friends in Texas, BOOYAH GRANDMA!!! And in the words of my dear friend, Anne Warner. BAM!!! Have a great weekend everyone!
