Oh yeah, that.

I am allowing myself TEN MINUTES to write you guys an update before I go back to deciding which 16 crucial words to delete from a max 500 word paper, and reading 200 more pages before Friday.

School is going as well as can be expected and at the same time kicking my butt. A paper a week is still killing me, especially since once I'm through with research I usually need at least 5 drafts to get it into academic language. Right now I'm see-sawing between needing to add more words to be more specific so I don't get annoying questions about things that I didn't look into (because, seriously, I CAN'T BE AN EXPERT IN A WEEK! I am not Tony Stark!) and needing to cut at least 16 words to make it under my word count. BLURGH!

Otherwise, though, classes are going well. I got to present on Sherlock in my Film Musicology class and it was awesome. I keep getting really good ideas for my own research, but of course I don't have time to work on that right now. Heaven forbid I be doing original research in an area I'm actually excited about! We're still talking about searching in Z-401, though we've moved from search engines (like Google) to commercial databases (like Ebsco)! I am learning SO MUCH in that class *sarcasm*. But hey, at least it's not a ton of extra work right?

The biggest news here is that I got a job! I'm working 12 hours a week cataloging scores for the music library. This is the ideal position for me - it gets me valuable experience I can put on my resume and gives me practice at something I didn't get to catalog much at my old position. It'll also give me a little bit of spending money - minimum wage in Indiana is way higher than minimum in Ohio! At first I was concerned that it might be too much with everything else, but I'm finding it really nice to have a couple hours a week where I can do something that I know I'm pretty good at, that distracts me from the pretty much constant feeling of a sour stomach from nerves, and that I have no chance whatsoever at getting an F on!

And that's it, time's up! I hope you're all doing well (I'm writing this three days early, so far it's just Katie's post) and I hope we don't have weeks like last week too often!

EDIT: Remember how I said everything was fine? (Okay, fine-ish. Okay, not really fine, but I'll live.) Well that was until somebody decided to shut down the government! Because, apparently, government shutdown means EVERYTHING, right down to the Library of Congress website. I mean, I get that you can't get in the building, but they TOOK DOWN THE FRICKIN' WEBSITE! That's, like, 90% of my sources for original research! (We do have others but none are nearly so comprehensive.) Every paper since the first week has included at least one manuscript from their digital resources. Now, normally, I prefer to stay out of politics, but I draw the line when it starts interfering with my HOMEWORK! (As a side note, this isn't the only class that's affected - I had an email from a professor of another class that there was a section of our homework we wouldn't be able to do if we hadn't started yet, so just skip it.) I'm not siding with anyone (personally I think they're all being morons for not being willing to compromise on SOMETHING) but will somebody, PLEASE, put the right people in time-out until they stop sulking and WORK THINGS OUT?!?! (I also fail to see how punishing those of us who have nothing to do with the process by, for example, impeding our research and making us fail an assignment, is going to get anything done. Let's punish the idiots that got us into this mess instead! I'd suggest starting with a docked allowance - that seems to work on others who typically behave in this manner!)