Comps Schedule
Apologies for excessive quotation marks around words used loosely.
I have devised a lovely schedule to prepare for my comprehensive exams. In order to get through everything and to have my weekends "free" (meaning reading no new books but reviewing, gathering books for the next week, printing reviews for the next week, doing laundry, cleaning my apartment, going grocery shopping, and possibly breathing), I have to "read" four books a day. My plan is to spend two or three hours per book. I'm literally setting an alarm for two hours when I start a book. If I'm not done "reading" it when the alarm sounds, I set it for one more hour. When that one goes off, I'm "finished" with the book and move on to the next one, no matter what. This means my work day will be anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, depending on the breakdown of 2 and 3 hour books.
This plan worked well yesterday. I started at 10:00 am and finished the last one at 8:00 and just piddled around and relaxed all evening. Today is not going so well. Since classes haven't technically started, the library is only open 8 to 5, Monday through Friday, right now, so I wasn't able to get my books for this week over the weekend. I got up this morning and realized that I only had half the books I wanted to read today. I headed for campus at around 9:00. It is now 12:30 and I have yet to start reading because it has taken me this long to track down the books. The library copies were checked out so I had to scrounge around the history department. I finally found the last one (one I swear I own but can't find on any of my shelves) in my friends' office. But no one was in there. So I just swiped the book and left a note that I'll bring it back tomorrow. Hopefully the owner wasn't planning on reading it today. I think I'm th only one reading on a colonial list right now so it should be OK.
The new plan for today is to eat lunch and then start reading at 1:00, which is when I should have finished the first book if it took three hours. If I can get through all of today's books in two hours, I can still do all four. If not, I'll just have to read one over the weekend to get caught back up with my schedule.
And I hereby promise to keep the comps whining to a minimum. Otherwise y'all will be ready to kill me by the time March 19 arrives. If I disappear for days on end, it'll just mean I've been stuck with too many three hour books and don't have the time or the energy to post or comment. I'll try to at least pop in on the weekends.
EDIT: My new digital camera just arrived! Yay! I'm all kinds of excited. Now if I only had time to take it out of the box and play with it...
I have devised a lovely schedule to prepare for my comprehensive exams. In order to get through everything and to have my weekends "free" (meaning reading no new books but reviewing, gathering books for the next week, printing reviews for the next week, doing laundry, cleaning my apartment, going grocery shopping, and possibly breathing), I have to "read" four books a day. My plan is to spend two or three hours per book. I'm literally setting an alarm for two hours when I start a book. If I'm not done "reading" it when the alarm sounds, I set it for one more hour. When that one goes off, I'm "finished" with the book and move on to the next one, no matter what. This means my work day will be anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, depending on the breakdown of 2 and 3 hour books.
This plan worked well yesterday. I started at 10:00 am and finished the last one at 8:00 and just piddled around and relaxed all evening. Today is not going so well. Since classes haven't technically started, the library is only open 8 to 5, Monday through Friday, right now, so I wasn't able to get my books for this week over the weekend. I got up this morning and realized that I only had half the books I wanted to read today. I headed for campus at around 9:00. It is now 12:30 and I have yet to start reading because it has taken me this long to track down the books. The library copies were checked out so I had to scrounge around the history department. I finally found the last one (one I swear I own but can't find on any of my shelves) in my friends' office. But no one was in there. So I just swiped the book and left a note that I'll bring it back tomorrow. Hopefully the owner wasn't planning on reading it today. I think I'm th only one reading on a colonial list right now so it should be OK.
The new plan for today is to eat lunch and then start reading at 1:00, which is when I should have finished the first book if it took three hours. If I can get through all of today's books in two hours, I can still do all four. If not, I'll just have to read one over the weekend to get caught back up with my schedule.
And I hereby promise to keep the comps whining to a minimum. Otherwise y'all will be ready to kill me by the time March 19 arrives. If I disappear for days on end, it'll just mean I've been stuck with too many three hour books and don't have the time or the energy to post or comment. I'll try to at least pop in on the weekends.
EDIT: My new digital camera just arrived! Yay! I'm all kinds of excited. Now if I only had time to take it out of the box and play with it...