Mission Completion!

Much like the Little Einsteins, I had a mission this week. It was not only the usual (full time job, full time children, full time husband, organizing a community fundraiser, laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping- on a budget with coupons, etc), but this one was for school.

Monday I had to present my paper in my Recent American History class at UAH, but the actual paper wasn't due until Friday. If you're just catching up, I am taking a few undergraduate classes to fulfill a pre-requisite before I start a Masters program in History at UAH. I graduated with a minor in history, so I just need a couple of classes. I think I want to teach at a college level, but I'm honestly not all that sure I'm an "academic". Here's why:

I did all the research and just knew that I could whip that paper right up. I'm a writer, right? I do have a degree in English and love to write- THIS WILL BE EASY!

WRONG!
It has been a decade since I've written a "paper" and I honestly forgot how difficult it is to put all the pieces together- especially the formatting, spacing, capitalization, etc. I had to re-learn all of that! I've written a ton of reports for work, so the fact that I was still "in shape" that was the fallacy I was believing.

I started about 8:30 on Thursday night (I know- this is sad, but I'm being honest here- I had all the research done already) and I stayed up until 3 in the am finishing it. And really, I still had 2 pages left out of the 18 it needed to be, but the majority was done. And it was double spaced, folks, thankfully. I was the one in class who asked when he assigned it!

So, Friday, I thought I'd just lay back a little with work and finish it. And I did- with only a few minor work disasters going on. I worked about 4 more hours on it on Friday morning and then had the footnotes and bibliography left. This is where it got sticky. I worked for THREE hours on the footnotes and then another hour on the bibliography! I hadn't even looked at a CMS formatted ANYTHING in a LONG time. So, it took my brain a while to readjust. And I hadn't documented my notes like I wish I would have. It took FO-e-vah.

If you do the math, that would be 14.5 hours just writing this stinking paper.

Here is the cool part, though. You can turn it in online! Isn't that wild? I guess that they've done it for a while with internet classes, but I guess I just assumed that you e-mailed it if you did that. There is even a website and the professor set up and code and password, etc. Crazy!

So, MISSION COMPLETION! I just hope I get a good grade... (and he doesn't check all the references, but that's a different story)

I started thinking about why this would be so hard when it was SO easy a few years ago. I could write papers left and right. But I was in the groove, had nothing else to do and my brain wasn't scattered with all kinds of other useless information. I think if you are in college full time then you are just used to using that side of your brain. Mine still needs a little dusting off, but I worked it up to a shine the other night! Whew! Glad that one is OVER!