Wow … it’s been a hellacious eight weeks. Ever since my poster presentation on October 20, it’s been one wave of insanely intense schoolwork after another (although, as always, procrastination stuck its head in there along the way as well).

I watched election coverage and updated the results all night on Election Night for the Internet Public Library, along with three or four days preceding that involved meetings and lots of hand-holding from the patient tech person at IPL setting up the technology to make the file transfer happen for the election updates. Then I had a huge hour-long PATRIOT Act presentation in Information Policy on November 3, the night after the election. A short breather (of course the breather included the usual diet of weekly “problem sets” and homework assignments that held up the work I had to do on larger projects). Then a take-home final in Cataloging (the course is called Organization of Information Resources at SI). Then a long paper in Information Policy. Then a presentation in Government Information. Another presentation last night in Cataloging. I have a paper due on Monday in Cataloging, and then my term will be officially over.

I’m not saying that my plight was unusually dire. It wasn’t. I consider myself fortunate (in more ways than I can go into on this blog). I have heard stories of other students at SI (especially the HCI students) who have had far more intense terms than I’ve had this autumn. So I’m definitely not holding myself out to be an exceptionally burdened grad student. And my hat is off to all of my student colleagues, many of whom have to juggle commutes and kids and all kinds of other commitments.

But I will say that I’m glad it’s almost over (for a couple of weeks, anyway).