what a difference a week makes. two weeks ago i was so overwhelmed by my apathy for life in general that i could barely raise a smile about having some free time to play guitar. now, a week later, i’ve had so much interest in everything, that i’ve completely been ignoring all my school work. i guess sometimes my mind just decides to take a week off – i just wish i could get a heads up about when those weeks were going to occur so i could plan accordingly.
speaking of school work, it is that time of the semester known as “crunch time”. once again, even though i swore i wouldn’t do it to myself this time around, i have more assignments than g-d to finish just before or after the thanksgiving break. so lame.
but since i’m a senior and all, i know what to expect. i’ve been through this all before.
with all the wisdom i’ve accrued through the years at college, i’ve noticed my crunch time study/writing habits changing and finally stabilizing here at the end of my collegiate career. the most important benefit of this stabilization is that instead of worrying about how much time i have left to complete a project, i now focus on how much time any given project will take me, based on how long similar projects have taken in the past. (not that anyone is going to care) but i’ve learned that i work in basically the following way:
i can usually compose a paper at about a page an hour. however, upper level courses tend to be more demanding so i’ve found that i spend a bit more time writing.
1 – a ten page term paper will take me 14 hours to piece together. tack on another 6-10 hours or so for initial research, pre-writing and ruminating.
2 – 4/5 page essays (a common format in the social sciences) that are basically syncretic in nature (i.e. are summarizing/analyzing 10-12 source texts) take me about 6 hours.
3 – book reviews/papers analyzing only one source that are less than ten pages take roughly 8 hours.
4 – if a test is worth less than a fourth of my grade (25%), i will spend roughly 3 hours studying/reviewing for it. if it’s more than a fourth, you can bump that number up to six hours.
5 – quizzes usually get an hour study time max.
6 – presentations longer than 15 minutes take about the same time as a 4/5 page paper (about 6 hours). normally, i practice a presentation (b/c if i don’t i get all kinds of nervous talking in front of people) for about 3 hours. after 3 hours, i can say exactly what i want to say and deliver it like a pro.
i bet that if every college student sat down, they would find that they have a similar time table for working on different aspects of their classes. i would also wager that, if they were disappointed, with their performance in a certain area, they could improve that area by spending more time on it (and maybe adjusting the others accordingly). they might not see a direct improvement, but it can’t hurt to spend some extra minutes on a subject that’s giving you trouble.
so what does all that mean for the next week? two term papers – one already mostly researched so about 16 hours for that project. one not researched at all so we call that one an even twenty. one small paper that’ll be another six hours. one small presentation under ten minutes so about 4 hours total there. one exam (tomorrow!!) so 3 hours tonight and tomorrow morning.
so total school time out of class will equal 16+20+6+4+3 = 49 hours for the week. add my class load of 12 hours a week to that (counting the monday and tuesday after the break) and that is a 61 hour work week *before* i try to go to work for at least a few hours this week to make a little bit of money.
that’s a really gross schedule, but if i follow through on it, i’ll get paid in straight A’s (hopefully). oh how rewarding.
but at least i know what to expect. i just wish i didn’t have to do it all through the holiday.
such is life i guess, but i might be absent from the web for most of next week.