Thursday, April 26, 2007

Graduation

I remember when I graduated from high school that I didn't really feel like I was done, that there were more things I could learn at that level to prepare myself for college. I really don't feel like that as I'm finishing my undergrad. I keep being told by professors that there are no comments that they can make on my papers to help me improve on them at the undergraduate, 500, level. It's terribly frustrating. What's the point of all of these exercises if I don't receive any constructive criticism? I literally sighed out loud when I got an A+ on my last paper. There were no comments, just an A+ from a professor who used to give me more comments than anyone else. No comma corrections, no "you could do this better," no "when you go to grad school, you might want to try X"
I'm really ready to be done, I must say. At least a year after high school I still missed being there, but I don't feel that with college and I don't really like it. I verified with my advisor again today that all of my paperwork was in order for graduation, hallelujah. I have this fear in my head of being finished and not being allowed to graduate for whatever reason for not filling out my forms properly or something. Now all I've got to do is finish my thesis work and I'll be done with it all.
I hope I'm not let down by grad school. I really want to work hard and be challenged. I wouldn't continue to choose the work that I do if I weren't concerned with being challenged. If I wanted to coast through school I'd write on Austen or the Brontes or Mark Twain, I'm reading Joyce and Woolf and Pynchon because their writing is really hard! I want to work at it more than anything.
Okay, that was my rant for the next few months. If you made it to the end of this, thanks for your patience with my insanity.