"One bite at a time!" My professor told us that at the beginning of the semester. I just finished taking EDUC 871: Advanced Policy Issues and turned in my 34-page paper (43 with references and appendix) right before class and gave my presentation to the rest of the class. It was a great feeling to walk out of there and feel like I accomplished something.
Being a doctoral student, I'm no stranger to papers. On average, each of my doctoral course papers are a minimum of 15 pages, but I've written several that are beyond that and depending on the class, sometimes the professor requires more than one paper. However, there is always a hefty paper at teh end of each of your courses, you can count on that! Thankfully, I'm pretty good at writing, but one thing I always do is wait until the last minute. I'll usually start gathering resources and start working on it a couple days before the paper is due. I always manage to get it done, but it's way too stressful. I've been trying to work on that work habit because I know that the quality of work I'm putting out is good, but it isn't great.
At the beginning of the semester for the policy class I just finished, the course assignment was daunting. I'm an education policy major and took the intro to policy course that I needed for this class, but the assignments were very different. The course I completed had us look much deeper into a policy and gave us a real snapshot into the type of policy work and analysis we'd be doing in our future careers. I loved it, but it was challenging.
In order to produce top quality papers, our professor had us turn in chunks of it along the way, 5 to be exact and every week we met we had to be prepared to discuss with our classmates our updates. There were only 6 students so we were able to always share what we've been working on and not have to rush through it. It was awesome and I was able to get great feedback the from my professor and my classmates. The best part was we didn't meet every week. We had about 4 weeks off here and there to give us time to do our research.
I always waited until a night or two to update my drafts, but by the time we approached the due date there was only a little left to do. I really liked that method because I honestly feel like it's the best work I've ever done! I know it isn't perfect, and I'm sure I could've worked on it harder, but I feel very happy with what I produced. And, thank goodness my teacher set it up that way because even though I had over 20 pages completed on Monday, I still had a lot of work to touch up on and ended up adding 14 pages between Monday and Wednesday. Also, thank goodness I have a student teacher working with me because I was able to devote the entire work day on Tuesday and Wednesday to complete it. I had no idea it would take that long just to tie the loose ends. Now, I just have to wait and find out my grade...and that is always nerve-racking! Even though my professor has given a lot of feedback along the way and I think I'll get an A, you never know!! Anyway, that's just a tiny snapshot of life as a doc student.
Hey ya'll! I loved the book "Something Borrowed" and can't wait for the movie. I just hope it's good and not a terrible knock off version like the way they did Confessions of a Shopaholic. Confessions is my favorite book series, but the movie made it look stupid and anyone who hadn't read the books probably thought the people that did and liked it were also dumb. So not the case! Anyway, I can't wait to see it open on May 6th. I'm sure I'll be back on here to give you an update on my thoughts.
There's a sequel called "Something Blue" and I wonder if they'll try to combine the two or if they'll do two different movies. I guess I'll find out soon enough. If you haven't read them, they are great. Of course, they are total chicklits, but I love that genre. It's worth the time if you have it and you can probably read them in a few days.
