Sunday Morning Coming Down

This has been a weird weekend. Instead of grading, working on my final projects, or putting together submissions, I read a romance novel. (I'm a slow reader, so this really did take most of the weekend up to this point.) Romance used to be all I read, until grad school came along and took away all my time for "pleasure reading." Not that I don't enjoy what I'm reading for school, but it's not the same as picking up 300 pages of fluff and getting lost in a cliche. Now, most of the time, I try to read more "literary" fiction and contemporary poetry in my free time, but I needed a break (actually, I couldn't sleep on Friday night, so I picked up an old book thinking it would lull me to sleep. I was up til 6a.m.). The sad thing is, I can't fully enjoy a romance novel any more because I can see how bad the writing is (not to mention the editing...I found a "to" where a "too" should have been). Sometimes I think I'll still write one of my own, though, get a contract with Harlequin and a pen-name, and make myself a few bucks.

On Friday, I admitted to my students that they were the first class I ever taught. They were surprised, which was pleasantly surprising for me. I'm anxious to start my syllabus for next semester--I was assigned two new text books so I want to figure out how I'm going to use them (they're so much better than the one I had this semester!), but I can't justify working on next semester when there's still so much to do for this one. And I just wasted two days on bodice-ripping nonsense.

There's only one week of classes left, then exam week, which is just grading and finishing up my practicum project. I can't believe how fast this semester went. I never even had time to think "God, is this ever going to end?"

A year from now, I'm going to graduate with my MFA. I don't have a thesis committee tied down yet (yikes! What if they don't agree on such short notice?) and I have virtually no publications. Time to get my ass in gear (as my mother would say).