Night of the Living Deadlines

Okay, another quick entry for today. Even though I'm continually being smacked in the head by waves of work, I am managing to get some stuff done, which when I think about it is pretty incredible because I tend to suffer from the soul-sapping despair that accompanies a bunch of work that doesn't seem to have a clear or definite end. I stayed up far too late last night after working on the computer and managed to get four and half hours of sleep before returning to campus to begin the computer work all over again. I'm not kidding when I tell that I slept the sleep of the dead. I half surprised myself by not waking up and moaning "Brains! I need BRAAINS...grlahgggh."

The only thing that hasn't seemed to have worked out is the writing workshop appointments I have made to meet with students to discuss their assignment. I spent--and I am not kidding--about an hour and half nursing an over-priced coffee waiting for the student to arrive. Yet, I wasn't idle; I managed to complete plenty of reading, the sheer amount of which is an utter tyranny. Right now, I am checking my e-mail about once an hour, waiting for replies and confirmations from about five students for other appointments, so I don't have to wait that long again. (I can almost taste the panic expressed in their e-mails about the deadline. Time is devouring their equanimity and the remaining moments they have of non-panicked work on this assignment beast. As a fellow student, I can relate.) Actually, I wouldn't mind spending six or seven hours in the coffee shop, but I wasn't able to checkout a laptop over the weekend as I have been able to in the past, and thus am chained to a desktop computer in the grad. computer lab. Still, the work will continue tonight, and I am seriously looking forward to Tuesday when I can start my next paper which is due the following week: fun! (Feel the irony of last sentence! Taste the excitement of new assignments!)

Yet, I do enjoy my classes and consider myself lucky to have these kinds of opportunities to learn, something which I am indeed doing. The challenge is trying to avoid being zombified, which as reflected in the movies, means more long nights to come.