✓ Finish Summer Semester

I just turned in my final project for my first (and potentially ever) "summer short session," which is essentially a full semester condensed into 19 days (25 days, including weekends). I've been a little stressed out about the next couple of semesters, what with taking a full load of classes and doing an assistantship and homeschooling all the kids and having a new baby.

But completing this class—in the midst of everything else that has happened over the past three weeks*—has given me confidence that I can complete three classes spread over 111 days (including weekends), no problem. Technically I have to take four classes, but the fourth is more of a "filler" class, which I had thought meant it was an independent study class, but my advisor explained it's more of an "use these hours if your assistantship ends up taking more time than you're being paid for" class. So that's kind of a huge relief. 

Andrew also got a course release this coming semester, so he's excited to catch up on research a little. He was supposed to have a course release last year, but instead he ended up teaching an extra class (wasn't the pandemic just so good for everyone?). 

I'm going to post a link to my final project which I'm so pleased to be finished with. It's around 175000 words (not including references) and just knowing that I wrote that much in such a short period of time (while also writing about 7000 words in reflections for the class, in addition to project memos, and still almost keeping up with my blog writing) feels a little monumental. 

I did my project on picturebooks about residential schools. There's so much more I'd like to do with this, but it's good enough where it is. I feel a little embarrassed about sharing it, but I'm planning on sharing another (perhaps more embarrassing) project—my podcast!—once the kids hurry up and finish theirs. 

That way we can all be embarrassed together.

Oh, if you want to see another project I took part in (and unfortunately didn't have the energy to nag my children to participate along with me this time around), my friend Tamsin just released the second issue of The Bright Magazine. I'm on page 23, but there's a lot of fun stuff in there. Tamsin solicits contributions from her friends all over the world and uses her free time to put this together for all of us. It's rather fun to see what a talented, kind bunch of people are in my circle (I don't know them all personally, but I've claimed them as mine because a friend of Tamsin's is as good as a friend of mine; she has excellent taste).

I'll be sure to strongly encourage my children to make a contribution to the next issue. The kids' section is so fun and last time they enjoyed seeing their work in print. I'll probably just have to work it into our school day or something so that they'll actually do it...

So, there you have it! I can breathe again! 

I have two weeks until the next semester starts and have a lot to accomplish in those two weeks (ie. everything I put off doing the last three weeks) but the kids are looking forward to going to the pool a little more, maybe hitting up a park. This evening we played UNO before bed. It was great!

The funny thing is, though, with how hard I've been working on this final project (staying up until far too late working (three o'clock-ish)), my eye twitch has actually gotten better than it had been when I was spending my free time working on a collaborative project (which I think was really stressing me out, and which I need to return to in the next couple of weeks so we can finish up). 

* Our bathroom fiasco(s), a bunch of extended family drama...