End of term!
Apr. 24th, 2005 03:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
onefixedstarI just finished writing what should be my very last course paper ever! It's a day late, which is not terribly reflective of my undergraduate career, but sadly in keeping with my graduate career. (I seem to have become much more lax about deadlines, as long as I'm not more than a day or two late, since I began graduate school.)
The paper is a early dissertation proposal, and I'm actually fairly happy with it, which is a pleasant surprise. I've been struggling throughout this course because I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do, and that made it very difficult to write a proposal. I'm still not sure what I want to do, but tonight I came to the stunning realization that the project I wrote about for the final paper (which bears only a passing resemblance to the project I was developing all year) is actually moderately interesting, do-able, and would probably make a half-decent dissertation. I'm still not sure if I'm going to do it, but it's nice to know a) I am actually capable of developing a disseration-worthy research plan; and b) I now have a fall back if I can't find something that interests me more. I'm even reasonably happy with the document itself. I think I may send it off to CultureProf for feedback.
I handed in my second-last course paper EVER yesterday. Surprisingly, it was on time and I was moderately happy with it. I'm rarely happy with my writing these days, so that was a good feeling. I want to go into the department now to print the final paper and drop it off, but it sounds like it's really raining out there, so I may wait until tomorrow. Or maybe not--it's only a five minute walk.
Now that I'm all done with the coursework, I can turn my attention to the 120 exams currently sitting in my office. They wrote the exams yesterday and my, what drama that was! First, one of the students had her wallet stolen from her bag while it was sitting at the edge of the room (which is why we tell them to take their wallets to their desk). The wallet eventually turned up in someone else's bag, having apparently "fallen" in during the exam. (The individual in possession of the wallet was identified by the victim as someone who had been hanging around in the vicinity of the bags.) After that, we had someone forget to transfer her answers from the exam booklet to the Scantron. She didn't realize this until after the exam was over and she'd handed hers in. The professor insisted that she be allowed to take her exam back and make the transfer, which made for a really awkward situation. On the one hand, the exam was an official final exam, which meant that it was administered by the faculty and not the department, and the professor therefore had no standing. On the other hand, the people responsible for enforcing the rules were all graduate students (fortunately not from my department) and it can be difficult standing up to a tenured professor who pulls ranks and says he'll take the blame. They ended up getting permission from the faculty for the student to make the transfer, but I didn't envy them the position. Finally, MasseyPrincess's section ran into problems when the number of exams they got back didn't match the number of students who signed the attendance form. Since it was a restricted exam, they had to go through the exams (more than 200 of them) to find out which student had walked away with theirs. I think they were there for about 2 hours after the exam ended, counting and recounting and comparing names.
On the bright side, I didn't catch anyone cheating at the exam. Of course, since I spent more than an hour walking the aisles getting people to sign the attendance, I probably wouldn't have noticed if they had.
So yay to being done, and now I can start doing all the things I've been putting off until the end of the term. One of the first will be a shopping trip with MasseyPrincess. Unfortunately, she's leaving tomorrow for Boston and won't be back until Tuesday, so we'll have to delay it a little. Right now, I'm off to bed.
The paper is a early dissertation proposal, and I'm actually fairly happy with it, which is a pleasant surprise. I've been struggling throughout this course because I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do, and that made it very difficult to write a proposal. I'm still not sure what I want to do, but tonight I came to the stunning realization that the project I wrote about for the final paper (which bears only a passing resemblance to the project I was developing all year) is actually moderately interesting, do-able, and would probably make a half-decent dissertation. I'm still not sure if I'm going to do it, but it's nice to know a) I am actually capable of developing a disseration-worthy research plan; and b) I now have a fall back if I can't find something that interests me more. I'm even reasonably happy with the document itself. I think I may send it off to CultureProf for feedback.
I handed in my second-last course paper EVER yesterday. Surprisingly, it was on time and I was moderately happy with it. I'm rarely happy with my writing these days, so that was a good feeling. I want to go into the department now to print the final paper and drop it off, but it sounds like it's really raining out there, so I may wait until tomorrow. Or maybe not--it's only a five minute walk.
Now that I'm all done with the coursework, I can turn my attention to the 120 exams currently sitting in my office. They wrote the exams yesterday and my, what drama that was! First, one of the students had her wallet stolen from her bag while it was sitting at the edge of the room (which is why we tell them to take their wallets to their desk). The wallet eventually turned up in someone else's bag, having apparently "fallen" in during the exam. (The individual in possession of the wallet was identified by the victim as someone who had been hanging around in the vicinity of the bags.) After that, we had someone forget to transfer her answers from the exam booklet to the Scantron. She didn't realize this until after the exam was over and she'd handed hers in. The professor insisted that she be allowed to take her exam back and make the transfer, which made for a really awkward situation. On the one hand, the exam was an official final exam, which meant that it was administered by the faculty and not the department, and the professor therefore had no standing. On the other hand, the people responsible for enforcing the rules were all graduate students (fortunately not from my department) and it can be difficult standing up to a tenured professor who pulls ranks and says he'll take the blame. They ended up getting permission from the faculty for the student to make the transfer, but I didn't envy them the position. Finally, MasseyPrincess's section ran into problems when the number of exams they got back didn't match the number of students who signed the attendance form. Since it was a restricted exam, they had to go through the exams (more than 200 of them) to find out which student had walked away with theirs. I think they were there for about 2 hours after the exam ended, counting and recounting and comparing names.
On the bright side, I didn't catch anyone cheating at the exam. Of course, since I spent more than an hour walking the aisles getting people to sign the attendance, I probably wouldn't have noticed if they had.
So yay to being done, and now I can start doing all the things I've been putting off until the end of the term. One of the first will be a shopping trip with MasseyPrincess. Unfortunately, she's leaving tomorrow for Boston and won't be back until Tuesday, so we'll have to delay it a little. Right now, I'm off to bed.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 04:08 pm (UTC)Yes, yes we can. Shopping trip? Or matinee and shopping trip? :)
I have, of course, chosen a career in which I will continue to write papers for the rest of my life. But from now on, they will be on topics of my choosing and they will be useful (publishable, conference worthy, advancing human knowledge, etc.)