posted 2006/11/15 at 20:14
I'm taking a break from BFP-writing right now to watch Countdown, and by "watch" I mean having it on the television behind me while I do a gazillion things online while I'm still on break.
To the person who left the long comment about my worries about the BFP: I'm going to address most of your post-BFP concerns when I write my six-year anniversary column, but as far as my anxieties over this paper go, they're coming from a number of different areas. First of all, the fact that this paper is now the sole thing standing between me and my MA degree (barring that paperwork snafu not getting resolved here) makes it hard not to feel pressure, especially since I won't have student loans to rely on if I fail and need to go back in a later semester to finish the paper up. Secondly, while I already dealt with the toughest grader in the English programme with the MA exam (and I'm still not sure how I passed it), my advisor for this paper is pretty far up there on the toughness scale, and even after taking multiple classes with this advisor I still don't know exactly what she looks for in papers.
I suppose the main thing that's bothering me, though, is that in this paper I'm dealing with the connection between my classroom practices and my political beliefs, and how they relate to right-wing criticism of higher education. I've written about these topics in previous papers, and I've even touched on some of those issues on maloneysbaloney.org (which I really need to update here soon), but this is going to be my first time writing about these things at such length in an academic setting. This puts even more importance on getting this paper just right for me, because not only will my performance on this paper determine whether or not I get my degree, but to a large extent I feel like I'm writing the most professional-level defence of my teaching practices and beliefs ever. If I don't do as well on this paper as I believe I should -- and if you've read me for any length of time you know I'm usually my harshest critic -- then it's going to make me wonder whether or not I should teach for a living, or even if I deserve to teach for a living.
Sigh. Anyway, I have a feeling that this is going to be a long night, but I've got four sugar free Red Bulls in the fridge and somafm.com's Drone Zone ready to turn back on once Countdown is over. Let's rock.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon