Mental machinery

None of the gears in my brain appear to be willingly turning for me at the moment, and, thus, it is a challenge to think straight for more than few minutes at a time. Of course, I've no-one to blame for this condition except myself. You see, I only had two hours sleep last night because I absolutely had to have all of the ENG104 essays that have been oppresses my spirit for the past two weeks graded by this morning--which, fortunately, they were all graded by 5:00 a.m. However, I was only able to nap for two hours before going to that same class to hand them out.

Recently, I spoke with a friend, someone who has been through the grad. school experience, who told me that thing that you need to know is this: "On your very first day of class, you're already four weeks behind." That sums up my experience these last eight weeks rather well. The instructor for ENG104, who is very sympathetic and treats me and the other T.A. as (pseudo) colleagues, says that the work never really lets up the whole time you're in grad. school; the trick is to not stress out too much about it, and to try and do all of the work as it comes to you.

Since grading essays no longer burdens me, I can now focus my attention on the seminar paper that I need to have written by this Wednesday. So, it's back to the mind factory to browbeat masses of my brain cell into producing more thought from increasingly worn out mental machinery. C'est la vie!