Although I’m currently swamped with reading (and grading, and writing . . .), I thought I’d take a look at my department’s “Procedural Guide” to get a firmer handle on what happens when the semester ends. Apparently the transition from busy semesters full of classes to long days of work on one’s own toward some project far in the future is a rough one, and I (Scheduling Maven that I am) want to get my mind wrapped around this change as much as possible – preferably before I waste a few months wandering aimlessly around the library!
I’ve had a couple of meetings with my advisor, and am slooowly working toward the next step: if nothing else, I have some idea where I should start looking for trouble when my current work load lightens up! But as I was reading through the Procedural Guide, skimming the instructions for the parts of the program I’ve already passed, I suddenly realized the instructions bear almost no resemblance to my own experience of classes and my first exam. My first exam was not a slow and careful preparation toward a test of my knowledge of large swaths of the English canon. Instead, my three guys and I plopped down last August, I gave them a reading of a short poem that I particularly liked, and we wrangled over details of that for about an hour, until my conscience-stricken Chair called a halt and made his colleagues grill me about some other book so that we could claim we had “covered” a number of things. Two slightly sweaty hours in August and I had “advanced” to the next stage of my program.
When the authors of the guide caution, “All elements are subject to the consideration and preferences of the student’s Committee,” they mean it. Basically, a committee of three advisors shapes my time here and sets the bar. So I guess I’d better give up on the idea of finding answers in any manual!
Erin
Alan Schmierer