Ready to write

Oddly enough, I like outlining papers. It's the part I find most fulfilling: when I take all the tedious research and put it into coherent blocks of thought. I synthesize what I've got so far and put it together in a format I think makes sense and incorporates all the important ideas I've read. And, at the same time, I don't need to go through the tediousness of actually writing it out in full, grammatically correct sentences. I can just let my mind play with the ideas.

Of course, now that it's outlined, I've got to go through the tediousness that is academic writing. On the other hand, the writing tends to go much faster once I've got an outline. (Especially since I've got about 13 single-spaced pages of quotes for a 15-page double-spaced paper.)

They made a very agreeable "thump" when they hit the floor!

So today my Latin class was cancelled. And by "cancelled," I mean the prof didn't show up by 10 minutes after class was supposed to begin, so we all left. You know you're in grad school when you're happy class is cancelled so you can spend more time in the library doing research.

And spend time in the library I did -- about an hour, which was all I could take of PIMS today. In that hour, I discovered where NOT to look for the information I need. Hopefully things will be better tomorrow. I also did not do readings for social history -- I'll try to do those tomorrow too. I did outline my paper, but I did that this morning before leaving home. If I can recapture my writing speed of last year, it shouldn't take me more than 4-5 hours to write this paper, and about 1-2 to edit. I've got until Monday to hand it in, so I should be fine.

I also found a nifty resource to look up the saints listed in my manuscript. It's not the most academic resource out there, but it's very comprehensive and a good starting point for more serious research. I've got about half of the manuscript done in a cursory way. It's taking longer than I'd hoped, but you can't have everything.

Finally, there was B5 tonight. For those who know the series, we stopped at Interludes and Examinations (which is the episode before War Without End). We're going to be doing 2 nights of B5 next week (Monday and Tuesday) to make it to the end of Season 3 before everyone leaves for the holidays.

And that's it. I'm going to go shower and sleep. Tomorrow I write the first 4-5 pages of my paper, research the next paper, read Social History, and have dinner with my dad. G'night all!