Thursday, November 11, 2010

I'm Lovin' My Last Semester!

Okay, so maybe I'm not IN my last semester of graduate school yet, but I have my schedule planned! Although I talked about taking a glass blowing class because, well, when am I ever going to get the chance to learn how to blow glass?, I opted not to sign up for it. Honestly, I'm kinda stressed about writing my thesis and next semester I'll be writing two chapters, revising the entire thing, and defending it. That's a lot of work in such a short span of time, so I want to just focus on getting through it. Oh, and I kinda need to do a good job so I can graduate. Yeah. Not too much pressure.

Luckily for me I have my class and teaching schedule pretty much figured out. I'll be taking two grad level classes, thesis credits, and only teaching one class--which is the same class I'm teaching THIS semester, so I basically already have my lessons and assignments created and figured out, I'll just be reorganizing them over the Winter Break. My classes? Well, unfortunately none of them feed into my thesis, but I have to take something! They're both by the same professor, whom I adore!, and are literature based. Luckily for me I'll be reading a lot of new books I haven't read before (but hopefully a few I have).

One class is entirely focused on writings by Toni Morrison. I haven't read any of her books, yes, that means I haven't read Beloved, but my favorite time frame of literature is contemporary American Lit, so this is great! The other class is called "Story Chronicles," which intrigues me as well. Admittedly I always think of the SNL Digital Short: Lazy Sunday when I think of the title of this class. "The Chronic(WHAT)cles of Narnia!" Okay, so the Chronicles of Narnia aren't exactly the ideal example of the story chronicles I'll be reading. Basically the criteria are shorter stories in a book that have a similar theme or purpose, and written by the same author. Examples of these would be 1,001 Arabian Nights, The Sketch Book of Geoffry Crayon, Gent. (containing stories like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle"), and The House on Mango Street. It'll be interesting to see what I wind up reading.

Oh, and the best part of it all? I only have to be on campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays! I take and teach classes on those days. They're long days, but no longer than I spend on campus now. The rest of the days of the week are free and clear with four-day weekends in my future...so here's hoping I spend a lot of time in the library/office doing research and writing!

I should really be grading my student's homework right now, but I've been procrastinating. -sigh- I should be an adult and get to work, so g'night and thank you to everyone for your comments, I love to read them and hear from you!

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