Confidence!
23-Oct-02
Today was the first day I actually felt confident about taking the exam!!! Wheee! Inga & I went over the questions on a past exam, and I felt more comfortable with the answers I would be able to provide. It also helped to focus in on the poems that I should read in the next 3 weeks, as we get closer and closer to exam day.
Inga also wants to re-read Beowulf this winter, after my exam, in preparation for her GRE this April. Whee! I love Beowulf! And she had syllabi for me to look at to compare for the science fiction class in the Spring.
When I got back from lunch/study group, I got an email from my boss reminding us that, because of our ship date, we should plan to work over the shutdown week. Erp! I was planning on finishing my novel that week! Oh, well. At least I won’t be losing paycheck over it! Still, I think we should have been notified earlier– a lot of people probably planned vacations with their families for that week, and now they won’t be able to go. Of course, most of the folks in my dept. are Chinese, so sacrificing a family vacation for work is a cultural virtue.
Sigh.
I then went through my proposed writing schedule for the novel and decided that I could probably write 500 words each morning, and at least 1200 words each night, using the weekends to catch up for that first week when I won’t be able to do much at all. In the end, with my imaginary schedule for writing, I ended up with over 50,000 by midnight of November 30. Whether I actually manage to “walk the walk,” is another story entirely. It will be easier if my favorite TV shows can find it in themselves to go into re-runs next month, I must say.