Work/ School Balance

The title of this post is what I used in my paper I’m turning in tomorrow. This semester has been an interesting education. I’m using pictures in my Topics in Prose class on photo-fiction. My paper is on theory for photography and writing. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how this paper is going to go. I don’t think it makes much sense, but it is what it is. The images I used are ones my nephew took at my wedding. I spoke about how there’s more to the picture than what you can see and how pictures have different meanings to different people and how the 1,000 words are different for everyone who looks at them.

I went into this weekend not sure how I was going to make it through with all of my homework. I had a story to write that I had no clue what it was going to be, a paper to write that I had barely started, four short stories to read, and a short novella. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, it was. What ended up happening is I wrote my short story yesterday, starting with an idea of scars and a picture of me and two of my friends from when we were little. I was lost. But my writer brain kicked in, and I ended up with a seven-page story (including the picture) about a girl who goes missing and leaves unseen scars. It was funny and dramatic and sad and so many other things. I like it, but we’ll see what everyone says next week when they critique it. I read the novella today and finished my paper, along with critiquing two of the four stories. It will maybe take me an hour to do both if that so, I’ll be able to go into tomorrow’s class feeling good. We have a guest coming to class tomorrow, the author of that novella I had to read. I’m happy to say I enjoyed it.

I wrote last week about the snowstorm. I didn’t fare too well. I ended up losing power for about 40 hours. It was hard; I had food, but it got cold, and I had no running water. I wish I could say I sat there in the cold and did writing and homework and all these great things. I managed to load shows onto my iPad to watch before losing power, and that’s what I did. I also did some school work, just not as much as I should have. I also didn’t think about filling up poor Scarlett’s water dish before the possibility of losing power. My mom ended up meeting me with water bottles so I could give her water. Scarlett did worse than I did. Poor thing was so scared. She also got mad at me for putting blankets on her. She has a double coat and doesn’t get cold easily. Tuesday was the worst day, but the power came back on in the early afternoon.

Class on Thursday was fun. I wasn’t a big fan of the book we read, but it was fine. We discussed that, and we critiqued my essay, which was a bit of a disaster. The other person’s went well, and I’d read her essay before, so I didn’t have too much to say about hers, other than some editing notes. She did a good job. My disaster was that there was an issue uploading my essay, and somehow they got the original version before I made a bunch of edits and finished it. My completed essay was seven pages. They had a page and a half. They were trying to say what they had sucked, but in a nice way. Then I realized everyone only had two sheets of paper, not the stapled-together seven pages. I gave them a brief overview of my completed essay, and my teacher very nicely said I could upload the correct document and we’d critique it when there was time. I spent Friday night making a few changes that they suggested and uploaded them on Saturday for them to read. It is now eleven pages.

That has been my week. Next week includes an MRI, a nerve test, and the AWP writers conference. I think I’m going to go for two days instead of the one I was originally planning. I took off work in case. I’ll fill everyone in next week!