My first real test as a graduate school student came last week: the turning in of the first "real" project.
Yes, I feel like I've been writing papers since the second classes started--because I have. But for the first couple of weeks they were the touchy-feely papers about "goals" and "reflective-ness" and stuff that Hallmark makes so much money off of. I mean come ON! Like it's challenging for ME to write about goals. I make goals lists on a daily basis. The only challenging part of the first week of class was figuring out where the hell I could print my stuff out since I'm still sans printer. (Note to self: make a goal to get a printer and quick.)
However, a week and a half ago, I found myself staring at my syllabus, having a break down. My first issue paper was due in less than twelve hours and though a draft stared back at me on the screen, I thought that it was crap and that it didn't meet the criteria. I called The Boy. His words of advice were "it'll be better than anything they've ever seen. And if they say otherwise they're morons and you should quit if that's the case." While that was very sweet, it didn't do a lot to soothe a panicking soul.
After consulting with a couple of classmates, I decided to say fuck it and turn it in as it was. As one friend said "there's always the rewrite." So I sucked it up and turned it in, promising myself to never EVER begin any assignments/projects/papers on the night before ever again. After class, I took a laissez-faire attitude about the paper, telling myself that I did it to the best of my ability--and that I could do a rewrite if it was that bad. I told myself that again a few nights later when I dreamt that I'd received a 60% on it.
The papers were passed back at the end of class this past Tuesday. I didn't want to know what I got; I knew I'd botched the APA style of documentation, I still wasn't sure that my topic was relevent and I knew that if I had started it before the night before it was due the writing could have been better.
Then the professor handed it back.
And it wasn't marked up like I expected it to be.
And the title page had a comment that said "good APA!"
And comments in the margins of other pages said things like "good point!" and "great transition".
And I started to think that perhaps I hadn't done so bad, that maybe I was being too harsh on myself.
I turned to the last page and scanned for the grade. I squinted. I made my friend look at it for clarification purposes, because I couldn't be seeing this correctly. He looked at me. "Are you friggen serious?!? How the hell did you pull off a perfect score?"
Squee!
And squee again!
Proof that I am meant to be here: I got 100% on my first project!
Wheeee!
Although that does bring up the point that there is nowhere to go but down. And that kind of sucks. But at the same time it does give me something to live up to.
But I'm not going to think about that. Yet. For now I'll revel in this, for an A has never felt so sweet.
Yum.
Ciao, dahling!