Back in the day, the UCSC days, Heteo had a system for describing a paper in progress. She'd say "I'm in the 7th inning." And I'd ask, "How many innings?" and she'd tell me the target page range of her assignment. I don't think H is too much of a baseball fan, but you know, it was a way to put a slight spin on what otherwise is the onerous painful, grueling slog of trying to come up with something more to say on a topic you are so over.
Why yes!! I am writing a paper!
It's such a cool paper too. It's all about collections and programming for tweens and why libraries should really give this group more of their attention. I'm so well prepared for this paper. For one thing, I went to a conference on this topic, not a month ago, when I took those pictures in that post right below this one. Also, I've acquired all the textbooks I'll need for next quarter, because I'm taking a class about tweens, and you know what, I've READ THEM ALL. They are wildly interesting. Also, Heidi and I have been riffing all about new and improved tween services, where we work.
I'm so entirely sick of this paper.
I'm in the 11th inning of 15 projected innings. And when I finish the 15th inning, I'm done with summer school. (Well, obviously there'll be some editing, and I have to figure out how to do APA citations--like anyone really cares about APA citations. I'll tell you where I found the information, but how 'bout I just slip you an ISBN or ISSN number? Wouldn't that really be faster for everyone concerned?) There are really so many good reasons to finish this paper quickly.
For instance, you many not know this, but Breaking Dawn comes out on Saturday. Okay, I'm the only one here with this obsession, so I'll just say it's the fourth book in that girlygirl vampire series I was on about recently. AND, next quarter, I get to read 50 YA books, and probably a similar number of books for tweens. I could TOTALLY get started on that reading, as soon as I finish this paper. Also, the second Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie is coming out soon, and Sarah and Lisa and I are going to go see it. I could also you know, talk to people I haven't talked to in AGES. Or update my blog more than once a month.
Okay, I'm going to go figure out what else I can say for four more freaking pages.
2 comments:
And so of course you prepared an outline, didn't you daughter dear?
It's funny how some papers just wrote themselves, and others would drag on forever. Topic didn't seem to be the problem, some papers just didn't want to get written......
welll.......I guess that depends on how liberal you are with the word "outline." I did do what I've always called a "spider outline," blobs of topics with lines connecting them. Only vaguely hierarchical...and then after writing the thing, I did print it, cut it into paragraph sized chunks, and spread the chunks around on a table in various configurations until I had something just right. So, if that counts as "outlining," then yes, I did. :)
Post a Comment