As of 4pm Eastern time on December 23, 2011, I officially finished my first semester of my PhD. It was a long, hard-fought battle to the very end, as I was super stressed out over a final paper that I had to write. To get to the stressed part, let me take you back through the last week or so.
During the week of December 15th, I saw lots of posts on Facebook about everyone finishing exams, getting grades, and starting their winter vacation. We had class until that Thursday, followed by a week of exams. Needless to say, I wasn't celebrating with my friends.
Thursday, the 15th: I received my take home final for SLA. Five questions about five different chapters. I knew I needed to dedicate myself to nothing but it until it was finished, so I could then dedicate myself to nothing but my Spanish 815 final.
Saturday, the 17th: I finished my SLA final that night, a day and half ahead of schedule. I was really happy, thinking that maybe I could even finish my 815 paper before I returned home to Michigan.
Sunday, the 18th: I set out to get a lot of data coded and and analyzed, thinking I could get most of it done that day. 12+ hours of work later, and I still wasn't finished.
Monday, the 19th: I held an extra, 4-hour review session for my students, to help them prepare for their final that Tuesday. Most people would think I was crazy for losing 4 hours of work time, but I knew they appreciated it, and it showed on their finals. I came home by 4 and starting analyzing data again for another 6 hours.
Tuesday, the 20th: I worked from 8:30am until 6pm that evening (still on data!), when I had to go give my SPN 201 final. We had a grading party afterwards at the Sett in Union South that lasted well past midnight.
Wednesday, the 21st: I met with my prof to go over some questions I had about the paper and my data. Then I had my TA checkout to turn in grades. When I got back to my car, after having taken the bus, I discovered that I did not have my keys. I had left them in my building on campus. Almost in tears, I called Joe, who came and picked me up. I decided not to traipse back to campus, since I had a spare set of car keys at home and I desperately needed to work. I made it home, worked for another 5 hours (still on data :-P) and then packed to come home to Michigan.
Thursday, the 22nd: We left at 8am for Michigan and made it to my parents' house by 3pm. I started working by 4 and worked until 11. I FINALLY started writing the actual body of the paper during that time and was able to finish the lit review. Exhausted, I went to bed.
Today, Friday, the 23rd: I woke up at 8am and got right to work, even forgetting to eat breakfast until my stomach loudly reminded me to feed it. Around 2:00, I panicked when I realized that Word's spell checker had stopped working. Well, that's not 100% correct. It was working, but only for the first 12 pages of my to-be 25 page paper. Even running the manual spell checker wasn't working, and it was considering words like "durtion" (duration) and "ntonation" (intonation) to be correct. I called Joe in a frenzy to help me, and eventually figured it out, but needless to say, my heart was beating out of my chest.
The panic didn't end there. As I was formatting some of my tables, I discovered that some of my cells in Excel had moved (no idea how...) and had replaced some of my actual data. I then had to hurriedly re-calculate durations and F0 movement to be able to finish my paper. At this point, I'm not even sure what I was writing was coherent.
At 3:30ish, I started to proofread and by 4:00, I had turned the monster in. It was a very stressful day.
However, I did get an A in stats (much to my disbelief) and am still waiting for my other two grades. We'll see! Oh, and I got funding for next semester, too!
-L
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