Is It Over Yet?

Normally this would be a lament about the holidays and being overwhelmed with being cheery and bright.

But frankly I can’t wait for that shit.

No.

I’m on the “can this semester please be over yet?” tip.

I’m feeling pretty done.

I have to finish one book, which has been decent if not scintillating material, do one more big discussion post on that book, write a ten page paper, a twelve page paper, and do a creative piece (of my choosing, thank God) that encapsulates the material of one of my classes.

Meaning I have thee big things yet to do.

The book reading is just reading, it does involve effort, but hey, I can sit at the laundry mat on Sunday and kick it out.

The papers are where the big effort comes in.

I mean.

The things that I need to cover are deep and conceptual and complex.

I have to use language I’m just beginning to get the hang of and I have to write on concepts that are deep and multi-layered, plus, god damn, I have just read so much this semester I’m not sure exactly where to go for my references.

I have a lot of them.

I also feel like I’m going to have to go back in and re-read a bit, not heavily, I really don’t see that happening, but I will have to have a good sit down with my materials, articles, videos, books, and discussion posts and see what jumps out at me.

I am very grateful that I did my book review a week early and got it out-of-the-way.

I have already gotten quite a good amount of feedback from my TA in that class and my professor, who also noted that I had very satisfactorily submitted all the deliverables for the class.  I could probably send in a pretty picture and a poem for my final project and I would pass the class easily.

Of course.

I won’t do that.

I do want to do something that integrates my whole experience and I have a few thoughts and ideas to explore before I really have to knuckle down.

But as this project and the ten page paper are both due the 17th of the month I need to attend to one this weekend and then to the other next weekend.

I will use the time between at work for finishing reading and posting to my last, thank God, discussion thread for the semester.

I don’t really want to write the ten page paper this weekend, I really just want to chuck it all and go Christmas shopping.  I haven’t at all and I have just barely begun writing a few Christmas cards.

My mom sent me a message yesterday that both my birthday and Christmas presents are in the mail.

ARGH.

I have nothing in the mail.

Well, except for the three cards I have managed to write out in between supervision this morning and work, clients yesterday and work, therapy and being a therapist, and all the school work.

I am allowing myself a compromise as far as it all goes, since my Trauma training on Sunday was cancelled and I have five extra hours in my day that I wasn’t expecting to work on the paper.

Therefor I resolve to let myself go Christmas shopping on Saturday after clients and appointments.

I will try to do it all in one fell swoop.

I actually don’t have a ton of folks to buy for, so it shouldn’t be too hard, mostly I just like the idea of going out and buying some nice things for people I love and then maybe a little something for myself too.

I am on the fence about Sunday, as far as scheduling stuff goes.  Even with the Trauma training being cancelled I still have household duties to do and I’ll be meeting a lady in the afternoon to do the deal and my person in the evening and I really want to get my Christmas tree.

I am just wondering if I use it as a carrot or if I just get the tree early and then whatever time I have left in the day before I meet my person in the evening I will then devote to working on the paper.

Either way, it will get worked on.

I am not going to pressure myself to getting it all done, but I am going to take a really big swing at it and then give myself the week to let it stew and process and hopefully refine it as much as possible.

Considering that the paper is the only paper (well, I have written a lot in the discussion posts) example of my writing this professor is really going to get and he’s the guy that designed this PhD program, I kind of want to blow him out of the water.

Kind of.

Ha.

I really want it to be a good paper.

Which means I have to not do the whole thing in one fell swoop.

I can do that, in fact, I have done that for a number of the papers for my other classes this semester, but I usually have a plan and the papers tended to be towards creative things that I was able to crank them out.

This paper feels like it has to be a bit more thoughtful.

Anyway.

Enough with the school stuff.

I posted up another discussion before starting this blog, so I can say that with no compunctions.

I want to wrap up my day, I was up at 6a.m. for group supervision before work, and have some tea and watch some Peaky Blinders.

Yes.

Back Home

With a huge stack of books and notebooks and pages and pages and pages of syllabi.

Oh my God.

What have I fucking done?

I went from feeling pretty good about it all to feeling super overwhelmed after my last class.

The irony being that it was the class I figured I was going to enjoy the most.

Of course, with some perspective, I still think I am going to enjoy it the most, but I am awash in the anxiety of having to produce the work.

There is a lot of work.

Yesterday’s class blew me out of the water at the intensive.

I really liked the professor.

In fact, I am quite fond of him as he swooped in one morning seeing me sitting by myself at breakfast and made me join his table at the intensive.

We had a great talk.

He loves Paris.

I love Paris.

We are now friends.

Plus, he has had an extraordinary life, three marriages, multiple degrees, Harvard, Brown, CIIS, somewhere else I forget.

Of course he has a PhD as well.

And a lot of papers that he’s written and he seems to be the co-collaborator of the way the course work is designed.

First of all.

Let me say that I had some, well, not exactly contempt, but a little wiggle of worry that because my PhD is an “online” program, that it would not be academically rigorous.

Fuck my life.

Academic rigor galore.

In fact, as one second year told me, she thinks that we actually do more work than a traditional PhD program and I think she’s right.

Second.

I was in the dark a little about the length.

I had this idea that the program is only two years long.

The course work is only two years long.

Then there’s methodology, the comprehensive exams, research, the writing, the proposal and the defense of said proposal.

The course work will be four semesters.

Then I can expect at least another four more semesters of work to finish the dissertation.

Which means two more years.

And the professor made it very clear that the fastest anyone could possible do the whole shebang was 4.5 years.

What I heard from most of the people in the program was that if I did the course work and stayed the course with my research, readings, writing, methods, etc, that it would take in total about 5 years.

So.

It’s no different from any other doctoral program with the exception of the majority of the coursework is submitted online and that a large component of all my classes is to interact and engage with the learning community on-line.

There are 30 of us in the cohort split into two sections.

There are three classes.

Introduction to Transformative Society; Self, Society, and Transformation; and Creative Inquiry: Scholarship for the 21st Century.

I am the only student from San Francisco, though the school is located in San Francisco.

There were a lot of students from the East Coast, New York mainly, I think six of my fellows were from New York, one from up state New York.

One from London, a University Professor of Psychoanalytics and Psychodynamics.

One student from Hong Kong.

One student from Oakland.

Another from somewhere in the East Bay, a few from up North, somewhere in Canada, I totally forget now, another from D.C.

The woman from D.C. was also an MFT and teaches as well at university level, specifically Art Therapy and Play Therapy for adults, she was super sweet and insisted I call her if I have any questions about marketing or setting up my private practice internship.

Said internship that although I took materials with me to work on I did absolutely no work on at all, I was so immersed in the classroom experience and the work at the intensive.  And I read a lot while I was there on my breaks, as much as I could without totally isolating myself in my room.

Anyway, a lot of high-caliber, smart people.

Majority of them women, which was very, very cool.

Grateful to be part of some smart, intelligent, driven women.

Very grateful.

One of whom came up to me with a piece of paper today in a notebook that she was keeping to show to our future selves, our name with Dr. in front of it.

I was more than happy to write mine down.

Dr. Carmen Regina Martines.

Fuck that looks good.

And now I can stop giving myself grief that I maybe was in an “easy” PhD program because it was two years and online.

Silly rabbit.

It is not easy at all.

The great thing that I realized though, after having a bit of panic and overwhelm when I was in my Creative Inquiry class yesterday, is that the material is not beyond me.

I understand the concepts, they make sense.

Oh sure, a lot of the material is new to me, I haven’t studied these things before, but I have been reading academic papers and books now at a higher level of understanding for the last three years and the materials are not cowing me.

Nope.

Not at all.

That was a nice realization for me to make.

What was causing the panic was the number of deliverables that I must have for Creative Inquiry.

8 papers.

8!

And though some of them are short, I have a couple that are not, and two that are quite big.

Plus I have to get published.

Are you fucking kidding me.

I have to actually publish a review of a scholarly journal.

Holy shit.

Now.

I am excited.

But yesterday I was just overwhelmed.

What the fuck?  I remember thinking I have to get something published too as a requirement of the course, Jesus, plus, oh, great, thanks, I also found out that I have another book to read, in addition to the books already lined up for the course, I had to pick one of four others that were presented.

Let me say this.

I will not be going anywhere without carrying a book or an article to read.

That’s why I got overwhelmed, 8 papers for this class, three for Self and Society, and one big whopper for Intro to Transformative Studies.

Plus weekly discussions and comments and interactions with my cohort.

I worked a lot on my calendar yesterday and I’m not 100% certain, but it looks like I will have to read two to three books per week to get through all the material.

Well, not quite, more like 2.5 per week.

Plus the articles, many of them big, long, academic papers of over 30 pages, and every class has three or four of these a week.

So yeah.

The material doesn’t scare me, it’s just getting the time to do it.

I’m not sure what’s going to have to go out of my schedule, but somethings definitely are.

Maybe a few less blogs a week.

Maybe.

I’ll let you know.

For now, I’m just happy I’m home and all my stuff is put away and I get to sleep in my own bed tonight.

Very happy for that.

Very.

 

All The Deliverables

All the things

All the god damn time.

All the homework.

All the reading.

All the ibuprofen I took when I got home from classes today.

I got all my things situated when I got home.

Get the mail, grab the package in the hall, unpack from the day, then repack it all back up so that I can have it and be out the door when I need to be.

This morning was my first time riding the scooter to school.

It was great.

And not so great.

Great was–it started, it ran smoothly, it was a nice ride in.

I even split lanes a few times.

Although not with that vigor and vim that I saw a lot of fellow motorcyclists and scooterist doing.

I was a bit more cautious.

I will likely be for a little more time to come.

It’s just the way I run.

And I am fine with that.

In fact, I didn’t think I was going to split lanes at all and then, there I was doing it without much thought.

Except when I wasn’t and a few cycles zip past me.

The confidence will grow.

I found parking.

It was not the parking I wanted, that was actually taken, much to my surprise.  Although later in the day it was free and I could have moved my scooter but I was just around the corner on Minna Street and I didn’t feel uncomfortable parked there.

Granted I had to move the scooter a few times as it’s two hour parking on that strip of Minna, but it’s not metered and I had breaks and the building abuts Minna Street, so it only took a few minutes when I had to do it.

I won’t have to on the weekends proper.

Just on Fridays.

Tomorrow I will have my pick of the parking and not worry about it at all.

And now I know that on Fridays I may, if I don’t secure the parking that I want, have to do a little moving around of the ride.

No big deal.

The big deal was actually coming home on the scooter.

Not the traffic or the cold–the new motorcycle jacket works like a charm and is a super wind break, I was shocked and pleasantly surprised.

No.

What I was concerned about was the fog.

It rolled in big time and the visibility was hard.

I had to lift the visor on my helmet as it became too fogged up to see.

That was uncomfortable.

It is one thing to ride through fog on my bicycle with my glasses off, another to ride down Lincoln Avenue at 35/40 mph with fog smudging it all up.

I rode slow and resolved that for the future if the fog is bad I can take the park, which has a lot less traffic.

Granted the speed limit is ten miles an hour slower, but as they say, better safe than sorry.

My other thought when I was riding is don’t they make anti-fog helmets?

I wonder.

I bet they do.

Something to research.

Do they make them in glitter?

Yes.

Glitter is a color, what’s your issue?

So the scooter ride in went off without a hitch and I loved having my basket liner to carry all my food in and my books and notebooks and readers and coffee.  It all fit and a light sweatshirt, as I didn’t want to wear my motorcycle jacket in class or carry it around for that matter–what was great was getting to the kitchen at school, taking out my food from the basket liner and sticking my motorcycle jacket in the liner and setting it on the shelf.

Perfect.

So self-contained.

It was lovely.

And school was lovely too.

Good to see friends.

Good to catch up.

Good to get back into the feeling that I am not the only one fumbling around with time management or skills sets in therapeutic communication.

I am not the only one in the adventure.

There are others in the same boat and the common peril we all face–another god damn final paper to write–is a balm to my soul.

The final paper projects were handed out today and as I looked at the deliverables I wanted to vomit and in fact, my head got super full, so full with the last lecture of the day on Freud and transference, that when the professor laid out the final paper project I just about cried.

Well.

No.

That isn’t true.

But I wasn’t happy.

“You don’t look happy,” my professor said when she saw the face I made after she announced that there would be another paper due for the class.

I have no poker face.

I pasted some semblance of a societally acceptable pleasant mask on my face and hollered on the inside.

NO MORE FUCKING PAPERS!

Damn it.

Ugh.

Except, well, it wouldn’t be graduate school would it, it wouldn’t be getting a Masters in Psychology, it would be something else and I know that I am worth doing the work and that ultimately, the work will get done.

I have some how showed up for every class.

On time.

Not missed a one.

Even the weekend when I got sick and ran a fever and was out of my mind with exhaustion.

I have shown up.

I have turned all my papers in on time and I am doing pretty damn good.

I got an A- on the Pschoanalytics paper that I went out on such a huge limb for and I was happy with it.

I have gotten A’s and one B.

The one B was for formatting and should I choose, which I probably will, I can write an additional paper to self-correct that only B on my class roster.

I am not going to think about it yet, since there are so many other things to think about.

Between now and Paris.

I leave on the 20th and I refuse to go to Paris and have to write a paper for school there–although it is an option, my last paper deadline is for December 22nd.

But I can imagine no hell greater than having to write a paper while I am on Christmas vacation in Paris.

Maybe it’s somebody’s dream.

But it’s not mine.

Thank you very much.

So between today and when I leave for Paris I have to write–two papers for Human Development, plus give a presentation on an outside research project of my own developing (I have chosen teaching infants and toddlers how to use sign language as a skill that parents can develop to help negotiate communication with their children prior to the child’s vocal cords being developed in an effort to ease parental frustration and encourage another form of language skill in children); one final paper for Psychoanalysis, and two papers with transcriptions of therapy sessions for Therapeutic Communications class.

In toto: five papers and one class presentation with hand out.

In between now and December 20th.

Thank fucking God I have Thanksgiving weekend.

Four days.

I will be entrenched in my homework and I am going to do as much as possible to have what I can done by the beginning weekend of December.

If I negotiate the homework and readings well I can have three of the papers done by the first weekend in December.

Plus the final project presentation for Human Development.

Which will leave two papers to do before Paris.

One which could be optional should I choose to pass on the extra credit opportunity.

It’s a lot.

But.

It can be done.

I have faith in myself.

And much gratitude for a four day weekend next week.

As well as an awesome little scooter to get me where I need to go to get done with what I need to get done.

All the deliverables.

All the time.

All the things.

They just keep happening.