Sinus Blockage

Those little holes in my skull are clogged up with a bunch of crap and it's no fun. I wouldn't say that I'm totally stressed out about it, but it doesn't help me deal with the other forms of stress in my life. This week marks the opening of Spring Semester and let's see where things stand.

I teach Biology for Living now, not Anatomy and Physiology. I'm not going to shed many tears for A&P, for the simple reason that, even though I can teach it, it's not something that I have a background in. Combined with dissections, it's just no fun and all stress. My first year of A&P (when there was no dissection and reorganiation of program) was as smooth as it needed to be. Plus, I can explain biology as a whole to non-biologists quite well. This, at the moment, seems to be a good change.

As part of my requirements to keep my assisstantship, I've got to have 6 hours of class. Half of that is taken up by Conservation Biology, which I've already been informed includes several class outings. I'm not required to go to all of them, which is good because some of those outings are overnight for several days, overlapping with my teaching duties. And if you haven't heard, I had a bad experience once with an overnight outing for a class. (If you say "camping" around me, I'll think, if not say, "The God Damned Woods.")

Thesis. I've done just as much of it as the pragmatic part of my brain knew I would get done. Very little. I need to get it done. I need to be finished with it. I'm basically out of time, but I don't know hardly anything. I hope, if you're trying out grad school, that you get a committee that will push you to get done, because mine... they don't. I'm not very high on their priorities list.

I have had some breakthroughs and some speedbumps on the road to getting published. Pro--I got six consecutive pages written on Ashes of War at the first of the month; it's a whole scene and it makes me feel very good about how the project is proceeding. Con--I haven't written anything on it in about ten days, or anything else for that matter.

Overall, I know that I will get published, I will be able to make something of my writing. I can actually see that a year or two down the road... by that point I'll be talking to some agents, if not have on lined up already. The bad part to this is that, I have to get my ass out of grad school. After last semester, I can't take much more of it, plus it devours a lot of my working time at home, which means no writing gets done.

I have some tenative solutions, but my main goal is to get through tomorrow first. If I can do that, I'll be OK. What I need to do more than anything else is schedule half everything I do, starting Monday. If I start then, I'll have my office hours set up, I'll know what to expect from classes, and I'll be able to anticipate anything I need to take care of.

I'm going to start the upswing by making an offer: anyone who wants to read the section I recently finished of Ashes of War can, just tell me.