wink     ; )

Done

I'm finally finished with the semester! Now I just need to finish grading exams. Sigh.

My term paper was easier to write than my first post-Spark paper, even though it was required to be longer (20 pages vs 15).

One week before the paper was due, my prof and I had a great discussion in class. After class he said that I should make the subject of our discussion the topic of my paper. I informed him that I had only started thinking about that subject that day during class. Plus, there was no time to do any additional research. My prof was undeterred. He insisted that I simply needed to repackage what we discussed in class. He was confidant that I had some great ideas in there that needed to be explored. Furthermore, he felt that there were few people who could explore the issue like I could because few had my experience with the topics involved. In fact, he suggested that I should make this subject my master's thesis (!) (which would involve jettisoning my previous topic which I have invested considerable time on).

I was doubtful. I had mostly been winging it in class, which works fine because I'm quite good at sounding like an authority on a subject even if I only have a passing acquaintance with the subject. Unless someone else in the room with some expertise in the matter points out that I have no idea what I'm talking about, I usually get away with this. During our class discussion, nobody else in the room had any expertise in Aquinas, wave theory, music theory, sense theory, quantum mechanics and cog sci, so I went unchallenged. (I did have to be more careful when disussing relational ontology, substance ontology, and trinitarian theology as there were experts in those fields in my class.) However, just because I could snow people in conversation doesn't mean that I can BS my way through a 20 page paper--my ideas just might not have either the coherence or the substance necessary to comprise a sustained written argument. I needed time to think through all the issues that I merely intuited in class and then I needed time to write too.

My prof made me promise that I'd at least consider writing on the topic. So I did. I fleshed out some of the bare spots in my mind and then decided after two days or so that this could work. However, I was acutely aware that the centerpiece of the paper still needed significant work--as it stood, it relied on gigantic leaps of unsupported logic. I just had to hope my intuition was correct and that I would be able to fill in the gaps before I had to turn in the paper.

I started writing the paper, applying the lessons learned from my previous paper. I made sure to think about the topics constantly even when I wasn't actively writing so that my thoughts were better formed when I sat down to type. I wrote a better and more complete outline before starting. I consolidated my notes so that I wouldn't need to spread out as much when writing, and so that I wouldn't need to clean up so much stuff when I inevitably had to stop writing to take care of Spark.

Two other things made this paper much easier to write. First, Tree helped me out tremendously by taking care of Spark for lengthy portions of time. She took the day off on a Wednesday (using a "family sick day") to take care of Spark. (I would have gotten babysitters to take care of him, but he had caught a cold and all the available babysitters had young children of their own to take care of. I didn't want to repay their kindness with germs.) Then Tree also took care of him from Friday evening till Sunday dinner. Having three days to work on my paper with only minor interruptions was such a blessing.

The other thing that made the paper easier was that I was venturing into largely uncharted territory. Plus I didn't have time to do additional research. As a result, I had very little citation to do. I find that one of the things that slows me down tremendously in my paper writing is that I have to constantly stop to footnote and cite everyone whose ideas I'm swiping. But because so much of this paper was entirely my own creation, I had very little citing to do. Such freedom!

I presented my paper in class and turned it in on Monday. It was very well received. It was such a relief to finish it. I felt like my semester was over. Unfortunately, it wasn't. I still had a Hebrew final to take. I'm no good at Hebrew. And I had a hard time concentrating on studying because it felt like now that the term paper was done, I should be done with the entire semester.

I managed to get a sufficient amount of good studying done (though I certainly could have used more). I was particularly worried about the "speed translation" section of the exam as I'm by far the slowest (and worst) translator in my class. The professor handed out the exams and explained the format of the speed translation to us: basically, 10 verses in 10 minutes. Do as much as you can.

Ooof. I was familiar with the passage and was translating as fast as I've ever done (probably faster). At the end of 10 minutes, I'd almost reached the end of the fourth verse. The best in the class had finished the eight verses. Most had finished around 6.

Then the prof revealed that the speed translation section wouldn't be graded. It was just a warm-up. He explained that with exams like this, starting is the hardest thing: your brain freezes up and it's very hard to get into the rhythm and flow of good translation. So he got us over that hump by giving us this "warm up". Mean, but effective. Boy was I relieved to hear that it wouldn't count. And it really did get me into the flow of translating.

The exam was designed to take two hours. One person finished in about an hour and a half. Most everyone else took about 2.5 hours. I took almost 4 hours. Urg. Luckily, the prof had told us that we could take as much time as we needed.

In the end, I think I did well enough to get a B+ in the class, or possibly even an A-. And with that, I'm done with this semester and with Graduate level Hebrew. Only one more semester of language requirement to go. After that, it should be fairly smooth sailing for my final two years of my program.