First grad school assignment finished

[breakinglight11]

I turned in my first packet of assignments for grad school last night. I am pretty relieved, as I had a tough time buckling down to do it even though I had plenty of time. I think it's because it's been so long since I had to do academic work; I guess I'm lucky I went back to school after only two years, or else it might have been even harder. But I'm okay with the quality of the work I generated. The creative writing itself was tough because of how hard it always is for me when I start a project because I have to rather than because I've been inspired. So the stuff I made was a lot more forced and a lot less satisfactory to me than it might have been had I gone in with an idea. Still, I guess anything that gets out on the page is better than nothing. Yesterday was good for me because Tegan came over to hang out for the day, and she worked on a project while I did my homework. Her company was lovely, it was nice to catch up with her as I haven't seen her in a while, as having her there working on something with me helped me get into a productive mindset.

I'd love to be able to chill out about school for a while, but I really should get right to work on my work for my independent study in blank verse. The first deadline for that is the 20th, so I probably should have started on it already. I guess I was just having such a difficulty focusing on the stuff with the earlier due date I didn't think I could afford to work on additional stuff at the same time. A wee bit nervous about that because of how I'll need to work on learning to identify meter and stresses in poetry; I have for some reason I can't fathom had a hard time with that in the past, so I'm afraid I will make mistakes that won't be acceptable at a graduate level. We'll see, I need to get over my trepidation and just dig into whatever the assignment is; I haven't look at it in a month and I can't remember. And then not long after that I'll have to hand in the second primary assignment packet. That one will have to include the first draft of a ten minute play. I guess I'd better start brainstorming what the hell that's going to be about, as at the moment I can't think of anything that would sustain even something of that length.

For somebody who thinks of herself as a writer, I often have an incredibly hard time writing.

Comments

[crearespero.livejournal.com]

I send you congratulations and general encouragement with respect to all things postgrad!

I can imagine how it would be difficult to try to get back into academic mode after two years off, but if I had it to do over again, I would probably have taken at least a year off myself, having come very dangerously near to being burnt out on just about everything scholastic. As it is I'm probably going to go part-time this coming term.

Also, i'm interested to hear how your studies in creative writing go. Certain forms of creative writing, I'm afraid, do come much more naturally to me than do essays and the like, but I've always been too skittish about showing my work to other people (that is, accepting or taking into account their standards and tastes and rules and expectations --- none of which I necessarily care about) or producing inspired writing on demand to pursue it in any sort of academic context. I too have on occasion tried to write in verse and considered studying the art --- though such ambitions have sadly been delegated to the back-burner while I focus on finishing my dissertation [sigh]. So, yes, all best wishes for you!