Loose ends

Well, just one more big messy hurdle to get through.

Or . . . one big messy day, three big messy hurdles. Return the student papers, finish out my time at AFG, and submit my field paperwork for my MSW.

It'll be nice to be back at AFG; just sad, since it'll mark the end of an era there. But I'll be back in January to do some more work on the evaluation. So the only difference will be no more clock ticking, no more surveillance of the same variety. I don't like to be surveilled.

I have submitted the student grades, submitted all my work for the time being, and am now sorting through the detritus of the end of the semester. I got to the bottom of the laundry hamper and realized two interesting, if slightly disturbing things: (1) I had clothes in there from Thanksgiving, which means I probably haven't done laundry since then, unless I did it and just left the handwashables at the bottom (which is possible, but in any case, I can't remember, and that in and of itself is kind of telling) and (2) my laundry was so cold, there is no doubt that it helps to insulate the wall the hamper sits against in my office. Hmm.

Well, now I have both the washing machine and the dishwasher running, and I'm debating what to do next. Something about having an intense stress-induced adrenaline rush for several days makes it a bit anticlimactic just to go to bed, though it probably would be wise. I feel a bit too pumped up for that, anyway, though. If I drive to the supermarket to buy O'Douls and get gas, though, I'll probably be done for the night. Well, at least I wouldn't have to stop for gas in the morning on the way to Detroit.

One option would be to work on my field paperwork now, but my arms are tingling from all the typing for days. So I probably shouldn't be blogging, either, I know.

I did buy a ticket to California, FINALLY. Hooray. And I've left enough time for me to clean up the house thoroughly before I go, so everything will be pristine and fresh and tidy and all my personal crap will be a little less overwhelming. So I pulled out a suitcase, and can finally start thinking about being a person who is something other than a teacher and a student and a social worker, for at least a few days.

Oh, just to give myself a sense of accomplishment, I just tallied up my writing I've done since Thanksgiving: 1 28-page paper, 7 pages of short response papers on readings, 1 23-page paper, 1 35-page paper, 1 8-page paper, and 1 page of prelim questions. That's 102 pages, and just shy of a hundred if you knock out title pages and bibliographic material. Nutty. And that doesn't even include comments on student papers, or emails, or blog writing. I guess it's been a productive few weeks. I'm not saying all of it is good. Heck, plenty of it isn't. But a little of it, I think, actually is.

Between that and the very exciting meetings with a few faculty members I love, I think I'm going to head off to California pretty blissed out despite all the last-minute stress of grading and running around for field placement.

Rain on the lake.

I'd been waiting for the rain all day, watching the gray sky for signs of droplets. It's always a relief when it finally comes. Often I can see it first as interruptions of the placid surface of the water on the lake before I see it in the air, or hear it landing on the flat planes of roof, soil, and gravel.

It is a relief also to have a few days of quiet and rest. The schedule of graduate school, even the modified one I've been pursuing this semester to slow down and take a step back to try to see the forest, is rather overwhelming most of the time. I'm teaching this semester, and it's time-consuming and very demanding. The commute to Detroit on Fridays to continue my internship at AFG is also somewhat taxing. But everything I'm doing is exciting and fills me with a sense of possibility . . .