I look forward to having a 9 to 5 job

I really do.

School is difficult, because you can never really separate yourself from your work at the end of the day.  You’ve always got homework to do for the next day, or some project to prepare, some reading to do.  There’s never a defined time where it “ends.”

This semester so far has been pretty crazy–not as crazy busy as some semesters, but it’s starting to approach it.  I’m taking my capstone class, and it’s fairly rigorous.  Today, I’m doing a research  proposal presentation, and I just discovered, after looking in the syllabus last night, that a 2 page mock grant proposal is due Wednesday.  On my birthday. <groan>.

I’m stressing out a bit about this presentation.  Professor Christensen is a real stickler for presentations.  Going over 6 minutes will dock your grade 10%+.  Looking at the audience for less than 90% of the time will dock your grade about 5% or so.  It doesn’t help that I’m going on the last possible day.

Now, I’m probably stressing out more than I need to.  I’m just unfamiliar with this format for presentations, and that’s getting to me.  The result is that when I sit down to write, I find it very hard to concentrate because my mind is on this other stuff.  And since I could be using any writing time to work on my presentation, I usually end up doing that.  Unfortunately, because I’m not very familiar with this kind of assignment, I don’t think a lot of that time is particularly productive.

It will be nice to have a job that ENDS at five o’clock and gives me the rest of the day to do what I want, without having to worry about the stuff that happens from nine to five.  In some ways, it will probably be more conducive to my writing, even if it does require more time than my classes.  It’s very hard to have the mental space for writing when you’re over your head in homework.