Monday Again

It's Monday again, and after a very full last week and weekend, my brain is a little bit on overload and most definitely rambling.

I'm about half-way through my day of classes, time wise.  Two more classes to go for the day, but one is three hours long.

My first class on Monday mornings is a tutorial for an introductory class that has been making me just a little bit crazy.  Every week I show up for this tutorial, which is supposed to be an hour long, and make the (less than applicable) information presented in the lectures clear and applicable.  Unfortunately, the tutorial is an exercise in futility.  It almost never lasts more than 20 minutes of the allotted 60.  Today the main point the TA was trying to communicate was this:  Pop culture reflects ideas, and we are influenced by it differently than we are by academics.  Really?  Pop culture tries to influence us? 

I try very hard when sitting in that tutorial to not think about just how much tuition I paid for this kind of junior high social studies quality exercise.  I am greatly anticipating the moment when I get to fill out an evaluation of this course.  I've been looking forward to the chance to be explicit on just how poor the course really is for the whole semester.

So, I need to get through about 4 more hours of classes.  And then I have some catching up to do at home tonight - a bit of reading, a bit of writing, a bit of greek and latin review.  But tomorrow, tomorrow I'm taking the day off (except for one class I need to attend).  NO school work Tuesday!

Thankfully, as school goes, and even as personal commitments go, this week is less busy than the last several.  Not, by any means slack, but a bit less busy.    I need to start working on my last two term papers, but I have two weeks before they are due, and that is loads of time to produce what I hope will be high quality analysis of the topics and score me decent grades.  Witch-hunting in early modern Europe and the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  How are those for diverse paper topics?  (I may have let nearly all of my term paper topics be inspired by movies this semester... Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and one of my favorite movies of all time, "The Motorcycle Diaries").

Also, on another entirely random train of thought, compared to the style manual that I usually use, APA style is ugly.  No justified margins, an indented paragraph first line. In text citations instead of nice clean footnotes.  It's ugly.  The one advantage as far as I can see is that you can use headings.  That at least means that you eliminate the challenge of smooth and flowing transitions.  After writing a paper in APA style over the weekend, I'm looking forward to going back to the Chicago style that I'm much more familiar with for the next two papers.

I'm looking forward to watching a couple of television shows online tonight while I do some of the catch-up on homework and cleaning and all the little tasks that I let slide to make it through the crazyness of last week.  That sort of vegging is so needed right now.  A little bit of television (the sort of reality television I favor - The Amazing Race and America's Next Great Restaurant).  And maybe a little bit of reclaiming control of some stuff that had to slide in favor or more urgent things the last week or two.  I can't wait!

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 223

Today's Daily 5:

1. A quiet Sunday morning
2. getting an errand that had been on my list for several weeks accomplished
3. the satisfied feeling of printing off two completed assignments to be handed in tomorrow
4. the first hot-crossed-bun of the season
5. a fascinating evening of teaching and questions about Islam

What Not to Wear?

I'm having the sort of day where I ignore the famous Stacey & Clinton rules.

I plan to wear my workout clothes - yoga pants, a t-shirt, and a hoody for pretty much the whole day.

I know, I know.  Don't wear workout clothes except to workout.

Who cares?!

Today I'm shooting for comfortable, so I'm curled up in my comfy clothes, in the recliner, with a blanket and my neck pillow, and magic bags.  And this is pretty much my plan for the morning.

And it's beautiful!

Much needed comfort and rest.

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 222

Today's Daily 5:

1. Fun numbers like 222.
2. a great yoga class this morning.  I went in really stiff and sore and thought I was going to pass out a couple times during the class, but left in much less pain (in parts of me anyway) and feeling warm and relaxed and a bit more ready to face the day ahead.
3. A perspective shift - I was quite frustrated to have to take 2 hours out of a busy day to make a trip to the university library to pick up a book that had arrived for me.  I'm so glad I did, though, since the book ended up being an incredibly useful source for the term paper that I had to write today.
4. The way taking a long shower nearly always works some sort of magic and makes you feel better
5. breaking an overwhelming challenge into manageable chunks and then slowing accomplishing each one
6. finding ways to break up the challenges - supper breaks, play Angry Birds for a few minute breaks, a massage break, and oreo cookie breaks.
7. getting a massage/natural health treatment from my mom.  I was feeling pretty crummy today, and between yoga and the massage (and some painkillers) I'm doing quite a bit better now
8. Getting the major portion of the term paper I was most concerned about written.  It's due Monday, but it's done.  All I have to do tomorrow is a quick edit, check one citation, and create the references page.  Maybe an hour of work, tops!
9. The huge sense of accomplishment (and relief!) that comes from plowing through a fairly challenging task in a relatively short and intense period of time
10. Knowing that tomorrow I can actually fully enjoy my Sunday morning time at home alone, without having this paper hanging over my head.

Saturday Morning, Full Speed Ahead

I'm still in bed, but I just swallowed the handful of my morning vitamins, and I'm munching on a banana while sitting in the blue glow of the light from my SAD lamp.

In 40 minutes a friend will arrive to pick me up.  30 minutes after that, the 90 minute yoga class we're taking together will begin.  And when that's over, I'll come home, clean up and change clothes and head to the university library to pick up a book that I wasn't expecting to arrive, but am glad for, since it will help immensely with the paper I need to write this weekend.  After the university trip, I will be burying myself in research on diagnostic testing and labels for people with disabilities.  The pros and cons.  Are they helpful or harmful? What are the implications (practically and ethically) for working with people with disabilities?  I'll be compiling all of this research into an 8-10 page paper, figuring out APA style citation which I haven't used in probably a decade (why, oh why, must every discipline have their own style of citation???), and hopefully managing to accomplish the vast majority of this paper by the end of the night tonight, since tomorrow also holds a few commitments on my time, and I'd really like to protect my few hours of Sunday morning sanity and alone time from being infringed upon by term paper writing.

To be honest, I botched my schedule and created this rush of paper writing frenzy.  I knew about the project that was due yesterday, but forgot to look past the Friday to realize that there was a paper due Monday as well.  I built my schedule for the last week around the Friday project and the week was half-way over when I realized there was also the Monday paper.  And so, I'm scrambling, just a little.

Moments like that make me thankful that papers have always been easy for me.  Writing comes fairly naturally, and, while I'm worried about this paper the most of all the papers I have to write this term, because it is on the topic I have the least familiarity with, I am not overly worried.  There will be a paper by the time it needs to be handed in on Monday.  Really, there will be a paper by Sunday night, since it needs to be printed before I go to school early on Monday morning.

So.  It's Saturday morning, and today will be one of those full speed ahead kinds of days.