please send help
Oct. 6th, 2019 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardOh jeez. We've reached the "oh god my portfolio is due in six weeks and I am way behind where I should be" part of my comps semester, and I'm going through 3-4 books a day AND ANNOTATING THEM, and I feel like my brain is about to leak out of my ears and not only can I not sustain this pace for six weeks, I'm not getting enough done given that I should have spent THE SUMMER doing this, but did not, owing to reasons like (1) took two classes (2) taught a class and (3) everything that happened with the house.
My program is switching from comprehensive exams to a comprehensive portfolio, with my cohort as the transition, and I was told firmly to do the portfolio instead of the exams because "it seems less stressful, and we need you to not be stressed," except at this point I genuinely think exams would be significantly less stressful because at least I wouldn't have to write up 150 books worth of annotated bibliographies, just read the books. Not helping is the fact that because no one is one hundred percent sure what's required or expected the expectations keep CHANGING on me. (Like, we were told do the annotated bibliographies -- taking the place of reading lists -- in the Oxford Bibliographies Online style, and the Oxford Bibliographies Online are really short! So I showed my annotations to my advisor and she immediately went, "These are way too short." So now I have to rewrite all the ones I'd done already and the new ones have to be longer, and because they're longer that means I have to actually read the books more thoroughly, which means more time and more brainspace for it.) And I have to find the time and brainspace to do the revisions for the other parts of my portfolio, and write the one part of it from scratch that I haven't done before. (It's two article length papers and a "plan for publishing them," whatever that means, no one actually knows; a historiography essay; a grant application (this is the part I haven't done yet because I haven't had a reason to ask the university or anyone else for money); two annotated syllabi (both written, except one I have to rewrite since it's the one I used for my online summer class and apparently they would actually like it for a normal-length semester class taught traditionally); plus teaching evals from my TA stint last year. And the three annotated bibliographies for our fields, which in my case are Roman history, Greek history, and Roman frontier studies. And the oral defense, which I'm trying to schedule but getting professors to agree on anything is like herding cats. And one of my cats is on another continent, and one is in the Art History department, and one is in the Classics department, and the other one I see on a weekly basis so she's fine.
I'm...really tempted to ask to just submit in January instead of November, but if I do that (a) I can't teach in spring (b) scheduling the oral defense will be even more of a nightmare because my Greek history advisor, who is in Greece all academic year but will be back in December and (c) I don't like admitting defeat.
I'm just so overstimulated. Gods. I feel like my brain is going to leak out my ears and I have another six weeks of this. (Portfolio is due November 15.) And I'm feeling like such a failure already because I didn't do more work over the summer, which was so, so horribly stressful for me because I was so busy and so burnt out and as you know I was in Handyman Hell the whole time (I didn't get a vacation until I went home at the beginning of August, at which point I immediately got sick), and then I came back and the house was still a disaster and then Dragon Con and then school started and then the air con and the internet both died at the same time, and then I was trying to play catch-up, and then I went to Disney World last week, and then I came back and promptly started to have daily panic attacks about my comps. And I'm also auditing a class (my advisor's class) so I also have to do the reading for that AND write responses for it, and it's a three hour seminar which means that no reading gets done on Thursdays and the days before it I can't do as much reading because I have to do the readings for the class. And my advisor just looks so disappointed in me when I try to explain this to her while also leaving out Dragon Con and Disney. (Disney was lovely. I desperately needed that vacation.)
oh jeez. I'm trying to work out if I can afford to take one day a week to not do any work, because I know I need the decompression time, but I'm just not sure that I can. Maybe if I just read fewer books tomorrow. Today was a lot. I still haven't done any of the rest of my portfolio work because the bibliographies have to get done. oh gods. well, this is today's scheduled panic attack, I guess. (also if people would stop telling me to get on meds or go to therapy that would be great, this is my comps semester and I am supposed to be going out of my mind, save it for another semester with a normal workload when the anxiety is actually irrational.)
My program is switching from comprehensive exams to a comprehensive portfolio, with my cohort as the transition, and I was told firmly to do the portfolio instead of the exams because "it seems less stressful, and we need you to not be stressed," except at this point I genuinely think exams would be significantly less stressful because at least I wouldn't have to write up 150 books worth of annotated bibliographies, just read the books. Not helping is the fact that because no one is one hundred percent sure what's required or expected the expectations keep CHANGING on me. (Like, we were told do the annotated bibliographies -- taking the place of reading lists -- in the Oxford Bibliographies Online style, and the Oxford Bibliographies Online are really short! So I showed my annotations to my advisor and she immediately went, "These are way too short." So now I have to rewrite all the ones I'd done already and the new ones have to be longer, and because they're longer that means I have to actually read the books more thoroughly, which means more time and more brainspace for it.) And I have to find the time and brainspace to do the revisions for the other parts of my portfolio, and write the one part of it from scratch that I haven't done before. (It's two article length papers and a "plan for publishing them," whatever that means, no one actually knows; a historiography essay; a grant application (this is the part I haven't done yet because I haven't had a reason to ask the university or anyone else for money); two annotated syllabi (both written, except one I have to rewrite since it's the one I used for my online summer class and apparently they would actually like it for a normal-length semester class taught traditionally); plus teaching evals from my TA stint last year. And the three annotated bibliographies for our fields, which in my case are Roman history, Greek history, and Roman frontier studies. And the oral defense, which I'm trying to schedule but getting professors to agree on anything is like herding cats. And one of my cats is on another continent, and one is in the Art History department, and one is in the Classics department, and the other one I see on a weekly basis so she's fine.
I'm...really tempted to ask to just submit in January instead of November, but if I do that (a) I can't teach in spring (b) scheduling the oral defense will be even more of a nightmare because my Greek history advisor, who is in Greece all academic year but will be back in December and (c) I don't like admitting defeat.
I'm just so overstimulated. Gods. I feel like my brain is going to leak out my ears and I have another six weeks of this. (Portfolio is due November 15.) And I'm feeling like such a failure already because I didn't do more work over the summer, which was so, so horribly stressful for me because I was so busy and so burnt out and as you know I was in Handyman Hell the whole time (I didn't get a vacation until I went home at the beginning of August, at which point I immediately got sick), and then I came back and the house was still a disaster and then Dragon Con and then school started and then the air con and the internet both died at the same time, and then I was trying to play catch-up, and then I went to Disney World last week, and then I came back and promptly started to have daily panic attacks about my comps. And I'm also auditing a class (my advisor's class) so I also have to do the reading for that AND write responses for it, and it's a three hour seminar which means that no reading gets done on Thursdays and the days before it I can't do as much reading because I have to do the readings for the class. And my advisor just looks so disappointed in me when I try to explain this to her while also leaving out Dragon Con and Disney. (Disney was lovely. I desperately needed that vacation.)
oh jeez. I'm trying to work out if I can afford to take one day a week to not do any work, because I know I need the decompression time, but I'm just not sure that I can. Maybe if I just read fewer books tomorrow. Today was a lot. I still haven't done any of the rest of my portfolio work because the bibliographies have to get done. oh gods. well, this is today's scheduled panic attack, I guess. (also if people would stop telling me to get on meds or go to therapy that would be great, this is my comps semester and I am supposed to be going out of my mind, save it for another semester with a normal workload when the anxiety is actually irrational.)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-15 07:13 am (UTC)