Well. It’s all over. The fat lady has sung. I completed my final quizzes for Cataloging last night and sent in my notes to her about the graded assignment, everything is done for Library 2.0 and has been for a while, and once I finish writing this entry and submit it on Sakai, everything will be done for Research and Evaluation as well.
This has been quite the semester for me, since it’s been more like a mini-mester and I’ve never had to do that before. I also haven’t taken summer classes since between my sophomore and junior year of high school, when I had to boost my math skills and prepare for the SAT’s.
I finally paid my summer term bill the other day, and it costs more than it’s going to for me to go to Greece, even accounting for all the extra sunscreen I’m buying. In the memo line on that check, I was so tempted to write some rather off-color remarks. I think I’ll save them up for my final semester(s), which are coming up fast anyway.
In terms of the proposal process, which I realize is what I’m really supposed to be writing about here, it was definitely a lot trickier than I was anticipating, and to make matters worse, I believe I did it kind of incorrectly anyway – I wrote more of a research paper than a research proposal. As I believe I have mentioned, if I had to do it over again, I would have either not signed up for summer classes knowing that I had a big trip at the end of the semester, or not signed up for the trip in the first place because it really hampered my ability to think clearly and devote as much time to all the projects I had on my plate as they deserved and required. Ultimately, I’m pretty sure that if I had been able to stay focused enough to write more of a proposal than an actual paper, I would have had a much easier time of it anyway – not to say that writing research proposals is an easy task, but it’s steeped much more in analysis of methods and questioning rather than analysis of conclusions and then answering all your questions. Ah well.
As I also said in my individual journals, the ironic twist to all of my research was that it was on information overload and information fatigue and information anxiety, and I experienced all of these things to the Nth degree all throughout the research and writing process. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the topic. It was also interesting for me because every time I printed out a new article I would immediately wish that I had just done a CTRL+F search for key terms while it was still online but reading online makes my head, and one of the things I had tired to learn about while researching were the different ways that technology can help and hinder the issue of information overload. Life imitating art?
But hey, I survived and I am fairly unscathed – well, I will be unscathed assuming I don’t fail any of my classes, but I kind of doubt that will happen…not to jinx anything, obviously.
I hope you all enjoyed your semesters and will continue to enjoy your respective summers! For now, I bid you adieu and leave you with this tragically catchy Fall Out Boy video:
nickcarrawayandtheunreliablenarrators 