December 02, 2004
My first post-Spark paper
I turned in my first major paper since Spark came home. Suffice it to say that it was not my best work. I had to learn an entirely new way of writing papers. Formerly, I would spread all of my books and papers out on the floor and desk and work for concentrated periods of time over the course of three or four days. This is simply not possible with Spark around. Now I must work in spurts of a few hours (while Spark is sleeping), and I must clean up all of my materials when I finish each session if I don't want my work strewn about the house.
Basically, I had to write my 14 page paper as a series of 7 two-page papers concatenated together. Non-ideal.
My paper was due the day before Thanksgiving. On the Sunday evening before Thanksgiving, the Professor that I TA for calls me up saying that he can't make it to the Tuesday night class. Can I teach it for him? I responded that I had a paper due the next day, so, pretty much, no. He countered, "What if I call your other Professor and get an extension for your paper. Could you teach then?" I love teaching, so I said "Sure". He got me my extension, and I taught class. I finished my paper 20 hrs into my extension.
- wink [December 2, 2004 11:33 PM]Julie says:
What you wrote reminded me of the book review I wrote recently: A Question of Balance. It was a series of interviews with moms and described how these writers and artists had to change the way they worked when they had kids.
Congrats to you! I am amazed by what you did. Recently I have had a hard time putting out a blog post, nevermind a 14 page coherent paper!
Jeremy Pierce says:
Oh, to return to the days when I could work for two or three hours uninterrupted! It only gets worse with more kids. I'm lucky to get half an hour now.
I do need to spread my stuff all out, for writing a paper, for writing an exam, and for grading, but now I have to do it on the dining room table and close the door to try to keep the kids out in the living room area. Ethan can open doors, though, so I have to try to do the worst thing a parent can do -- put something on the TV that they really like, usually Veggie Tales. It's really the only way I can get anything done at home, as much as I hate using the TV as a substitute parent.