school rant (yet again)
Actually, I don't know how rant-y this will be. I'm not particularly unhappy about anything, but I am really, really tired of going to classes. I'm 27. I've been in school since I was about 6 (we won't count preschool and kindergarten). Okay, I had the one year off when I had Rook. But that's it. School has been my life, and hopefully it will continue to be because I'll get a professorship in a few years. However, right now, I'm burnt out on classes. Given the amount of writing, reading, and researching I need to do, I feel like classtime is just taking away from my working time. Yes, often the discussions are valuable and even enjoyable . . . but often not pertinent to my current work. Yes, that helps to keep me from getting too narrow and so on . . . but shit, I NEED MORE TIME TO WORK IF I'M GOING TO MAKE MY DEADLINES . . . having to do additional reading and prepare for class gets in the way. Often classes are more like distractions than anything else. Also, in a lot of ways I feel like I've outgrown the usefulness of the regular old classroom. Yes, I still need guidance--but I could be getting that from meetings with professors and specific colleagues. Frankly, every class has at least one jack-ass who mostly just wastes time on trivial issues (okay, to be fair, maybe not trivial for said person's field).
On the bright side, I don't have a whole lot of coursework left in my degree. I need to sit down and figure it out in preperation for meeting with my advisor tomorrow, but I think next semester might wrap it up for me. Then I'll just need to take my 4 comprehensive exams, oral exam, and write my dissertation. Hell, I look forward to being ABD (all but dissertation). Then I'll finally be able to commit my time to writing (ok, and teaching, but I enjoy teaching). I suppose that as I get closer and closer to being done with my student years it's good that I'm feeling done with these different stages, right?
Also, that mostly useless BA in Spanish makes me happy when I watch so many others in the program scramble around to get their foreign language requirements knocked out. Woo for already having that squared away!
On the bright side, I don't have a whole lot of coursework left in my degree. I need to sit down and figure it out in preperation for meeting with my advisor tomorrow, but I think next semester might wrap it up for me. Then I'll just need to take my 4 comprehensive exams, oral exam, and write my dissertation. Hell, I look forward to being ABD (all but dissertation). Then I'll finally be able to commit my time to writing (ok, and teaching, but I enjoy teaching). I suppose that as I get closer and closer to being done with my student years it's good that I'm feeling done with these different stages, right?
Also, that mostly useless BA in Spanish makes me happy when I watch so many others in the program scramble around to get their foreign language requirements knocked out. Woo for already having that squared away!