Treading water

For those of you who've been to college, perhaps you remember the week or two before finals. Every thing is piling up, you have two research papers to write, two final projects for studio classes, one lab project and four exams to study for. Looking over the pile it's easy to become hopeless, it's easy to despair. Yet you have hope. You know you can and will finish it all, because you've succeeded every other semester. You might think to yourself "in two weeks I will be home for Christmas/Summer vacation and I can relax and this will all be behind me."

Now take that pile, add daily readings that you must keep up with, and make all of those aforementioned projects due every two weeks. This is grad school. Not only is the workload bigger, but the stakes are much higher. I'm not learning for a grade anymore, I'm learning for my career. The history and theory of planning, the concentric zone model, Adobe Illustrator, GIS - these are things I will have to know for my life. If I want to fix cities I can't just learn this stuff for a test. I have to internalize it and figure out what kind of planner I want to be. That's intense.

At the moment I'm trying to find my best course of action. Historically, I'm a big fan of the put-everything-off-to -the-last-minute model and finishing everything in marathon-like chunks of time. Obviously this will not work here. I've been figuring out where I work best, and how much studying I can do in a day before ceasing to be productive. My current strategy is that when I'm too brain-dead to actually think (like for my statistics class) I can keep being productive in front of the TV by doing mindless map work in Illustrator. I'm hoping if I'm always doing something I'll keep up.

I'm trying not to let it stress me out or get me down. School is school. Just two years right? In the meantime I'm dreaming of the amazing career I'll pursue when I get out of here. I'm also trying to take advantage of the other academic non-school things going on around here. I went to a lecture about the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on Wednesday which was really interesting. Perhaps I'll post about that later.

At the moment back to work. I'm still in my pajamas, doing laundry as I work on analyzing Census Tract 151 in Philadelphia. I'm sure you're fascinated and want to know more about my project. Wish me luck, stamina and productivity. I love you all.