Monday was CWC night. I got lots of feedback on the second part of my thesis and everybody got to talking about how it all fight together. I admit, I walked out of the meeting bummed. After all this work on the stories, I was kind of thinking how soon I'd be done, and the gang reminded me I still had a far ways to go.
Tuesday I met with Juan and we talked timeline. The jist being that I'm running out of time to get the whole thing done. The conversation ended with him saying, "It's your call."
If I want to try for getting my thesis defended this semester, I need to have it all completely written and revised in time to distribute to my thesis committe incredibly soon. I told Juan I'd have my answer for him at our next meeting. This gives me just over four or so days to decide if I'm ready. Can I get it done in time? Do I want to try, or would it be better to just ease up on myself and allow more time?
I'm starting to really feel the stress. I'm not liking it.
6 comments:
I know it sucks, but would giving yourself one more semester kill you? I know how hard you've worked and you don't want to be so rushed and stressed that you have a super crash illness like that one semester... If you need it, ease up. It won't hurt to delay the real world another four months.
There are arguments for and against why you should finish it on time or why you could put it off. What it boils down to really is what Juan said, "It's your call." Do you want to show yourself that you can meet a tight deadline under pressure, or show yourself that you can take the heat while taking the time to put something together that you can be proud of?
Camii - I'm done being a student this semester, either way. It's more a question of when I get that piece of paper to put on my wall.
John - Yeah, it's definitely a priority question. Either one is valid, I just have to decide which is more important to me right now.
I realize that I'm posting a little late...however, I wasn't joking when I said that you have a couple options on how to revise it anyway. On one hand you can actually do the short story "lost and found" motif without a ton of revising (everyone else, be quiet, I realize that I pitched that earlier) and then do the 'family lineage' edits later for a collection to be published (which is probably more publishable anyways...).
I also realize the with the school question comes a money question and that adds pressure to 'get it done'.
As someone who has also gotten a set of feedback on a semi-finished work...it always sucks when you think you're close to done, and you're just not. As I'm rewriting now, I'm trying to keep what Dumbledore said in mind: "You have to choose between what is right and what is easy." I'm trying not to just restructure sentences in my novel, I'm trying to add pieces that work and take away chunks that don't do what they're supposed to do.
For what it's worth, you told Juan to trust you. You believed enough in what you were doing to fight for it. I trust you too. I'd like to see what you do...either way.
Thanks for the encouragement, Jenny :)
Even though you're not taking classes, you're teaching them. That's additional stress, too. :) But of course, it's you and I have a pretty good idea that you'll go ahead and crunch it anyway. You and I are both pretty impatient, so I see the temptation to get it done *now* :) Good luck ~ I'm rooting for you.
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