A Second Wind

The last couple of weeks have been difficult for me--I've been feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of 3 major final projects looming on the horizon in addition to the regular weekly workload of reading, planning for my 102 class, and all the rest. Unfortunately, I've also been feeling unmotivated to work on all that stuff. But yesterday, I finally had a brilliant (or at least pretty good!) idea that led to feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the second half of the semester. I can't even explain how much better I felt yesterday afternoon than I had been feeling for the last several days, especially.

I've mentioned here already about my struggles to choose a topic for the final project (including "original research") in my Contrastive Rhetoric class; later today a formal 2-3 page research proposal is due, and I was struggling with it all weekend. I went to the professor's office hours yesterday, left feeling relieved that I was on the right track after all, and as I was walking away from the building, a fantastic idea hit me. So I spent yesterday afternoon and all morning completely reworking my proposal. I'll be able to use the same set of data I had already been planning on working with, but I am so much more interested in this project now, plus I've had a lot more success finding relevant studies that have already been done! I don't know if it will interest anyone, but I'm going to be looking at the design of writing assignments for ESL students and how those students respond (that is, did they understand the assignment and produce an essay that met the requirements explained by the assignment). Compared to my old topic (a "rich-feature analysis"), this seems so much more interesting and even more manageable. It also might be interesting enough that I could submit a proposal to present my results at a little conference (like something local at UA).

Anyway, I am so relived to have had this attitude adjustment and be looking forward to this project rather than dreading it. The rest of the semester will still be pretty hectic getting everything done, but I'm feeling so much more optimistic about it now! (I am still looking forward to spring break, though!)