12 Days Left of Break; or, Getting Stuff Done (Finally [Maybe])

So, as of today there are 12 days left of winter break. It feels like break has flown by really quickly, but that is probably because I spent the first half of it taking care of my nephew and stressing about getting ready for Christmas. You would think that an entire month with no school, no job, and few responsibilities would mean getting a lot done, but it really hasn't so far. Since I made most Christmas gifts I gave this year (I have more time than money, being unemployed), that was a big time sink. Honestly, I've spent most of the time since Christmas dicking around, which is my own fault. What really sucks is that I have all this time off and no money, which makes going out impossible. I have $40 to my name at the moment, because student loan money isn't supposed to be disbursed until around January 6th. So, between the 6th and the first day of classes (the 14th), I'll need to get some big grocery shopping and food prep done, as well as paying off some debt and getting a budget made up for this next semester. For the time being I am basically stuck in the apartment - can't afford gas (even though it is the cheapest it has been in years) to go anywhere far, and couldn't afford to buy anything once I got there. So, my goal for the next few days is to get the apartment straightened up, and maybe even start on some of my reading for the upcoming semester. I know the reading assignments for 2 of my 3 classes, so I could ostensibly get cracking on those. One thing I did manage to get done while on break, which I'm rather proud of, is making two charts for my directed study course - one for my readings and one for my films. Since I'm going to be doing quite a bit of borrowing for a variety of sources, I figured I needed a place to keep track of what I need, where I can get it, when I order it, when it is due back (for rentals) and so on. I also tracked down and downloaded to my Kindle everything I could get in PDF format. Most of the non-PDF readings and films I have both a source and back-up source for, and I've already ordered the books that I plan on keeping from Amazon. Luckily, this is shaping up to be a relatively inexpensive semester for books, as I've only spent around $150 so far. Most of the movies I'm watching for my directed study are available for free rental at the Canton Public Library, and Mammoth Video does 50 cent rentals on all non-new releases on both Thursday and Sunday. The class is going to require a ton of reading and movie watching, but at least I'll be able to do it on the cheap. One thing I'm pretty happy about is knowing, in advance, that at most I'll have one long final paper this upcoming semester - my directed study assignments are just short annotated bibliographies for the reading, and my film theory assignments include 5 short papers, but no final paper or exam. I don't know about the format of my African American studies class yet, as the syllabus hasn't been posted, but even if I have a 20 -25 page final paper, I'll still end up with 40ish fewer pages to write at the end of Winter semester, in comparison to Fall. Thank God. I think that is why I've been feeling so down about school - the lst month of my first semester was, for lack of a better word, an absolute clusterfuck. I had three long papers due - a 15-18 pager for Modern American Lit, a 20-25 pager for Shakespeare, and a 15-20 pager for Film and Media Genres. I spent too much time on the MAL paper, slightly less time on the Shakespeare paper, and not-even-close-to-enough time on my Film paper. I still received an A on that last one, but the professor pretty much ripped me apart in the comments. I was finally starting to feel relieved about the semester from hell when I read those comments, which pretty much killed my positive outlook. And I know that it is stupid and childish to get hung up on one person's criticisms, but I do feel that they were unnecessarily harsh. It was literally 18 pages of negativity and then "but with all of that said, this is still a good paper. A." which was really a big head-scratcher for me. Her comments were along the lines of "you aren't supporting your argument" and "you're just using big words without actually saying anything" and so on in that vein....and from reading those negative comments alone, I thought there had to be some mistake with my grade. But no, the paper said A, blackboard said A, pipeline said A. How? How do pages and pages of harsh comments equal an A? I'd almost feel better if I had gotten a B or C on the paper, because then at least the comments and grade would match. As things stand, I don't know how to approach the situation. I mean, this same teacher is in charge of my directed study and teaching my film theory course, as well as running an extracurricular group I'm in. It isn't like I can avoid her, especially considering that the directed study coursework means meeting with her once every two weeks in private to talk about my progress with the material. I just really don't know how to approach the topic...I feel worried that I'll come across as whiny; just another entitled college kid whining that she wasn't nice enough to me. I know she won't take me seriously if I do that, and any sort of goodwill built up over the last few semesters will be dead. But if I pretend that the severe beat-down she administered never even happened, maybe she will think I'm not serious about improving my writing and research. Since the paper was an A, I could just turn the other cheek and assume, despite the overwhelmingly negative comments, that the paper was a fine example of graduate level writing. But I can't ignore the nagging feeling that her comments were somehow personal - and I don't mean that in the "she is out to get me" sort of way, but rather that she is putting a lot of pressure on me, maybe to see if I am a worthwhile "project". I get it, because she is going to be spending extra time with me to do the directed study. I guess if she didn't think I was worth the extra expenditure of time, she could have come up with some sort of excuse and refused to do it...I gave her the opportunity to turn me down, telling her that I would understand if she was too busy to take on the extra work. She seemed happy to do it, at the time. On a purely emotional, irrational level, it was really difficult to read the comments, because she felt like a mentor, and kind of a safety net, and that dissolved from underneath me as I read what amounted to "you aren't ready for this, you aren't good enough for this". Part of my brain was saying "what the hell, I thought we were cool" rather than looking at it rationally and objectively. I don't think I should be exempt from criticism because her and I get along well, and I show up to her extracurricular stuff. I don't think I should be exempt from criticism because I have given her good reviews and recommended her to other students. I don't think I should be exempt from criticism simply because I find it difficult to handle, and am honestly have a far too fragile ego for it. But I do wonder why the criticisms felt so pointed and personal - is it just a fragile ego and lack of confidence in my ability making this into a bigger deal than it actually is? Or were the comments particularly harsh? And if they were, was it just to push me into better writing, and put pressure on my methods? Or was it meant to signal that I really am not cut out for what I'm doing? I would hope that if she genuinely thought I wasn't a capable enough writer to handle grad school, she'd come right out and say it, but that is probably too much to ask for. I'm obviously not going to drop out or give up because one paper, that I admittedly didn't spend enough time on, got bad comments but a good grade. It does make me question my commitment to this path, though. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life constantly thinking that I'm not good enough? That I don't stack up? That I haven't published enough, that I haven't researched as much as I should, that I'm not the best teacher in my department? Do I really have the right mind for a life of competitive academia? I am not the sort of person who can fake confidence to get through the day, and I worry that the stress of always looking like you're in charge, always seeming like the smartest person in the room, is going to be too much for me to handle. At the same time, I don't know what the hell else I would do with my life if I weren't a professor. I plan on finishing my master's degree either way, because it is too damn expensive to quit halfway through, with nothing to show for it. A lot of what happens depends on whether or not I get my scholarship extended for a second year...if not, I'll probably try to take one or two classes at a time while working. And by working, I mean trying to find full time employment related to my field. The writing center at Wayne will probably be hiring by the Fall 2015 semester, and I have an in there, so that is an option...but it is only part time work, with a maximum of 20 hours a week. Basically, everything is hinging on whether or not I get the scholarship again, since it is the only way I can afford full time grad school. If I don't get it, I'll have to figure something else out, but I'm not quite sure what. I'm trying not to stress about that uncertainty, considering there is nothing I can do about it at the moment...but it is really worrying to think that next year, this time, I may be unable to afford school AND unemployed. Not exactly where I'd hoped to be ten years out of high school. Maybe by the time I'm 30 I'll have my life figured out, but at the moment, I'm not even counting on that. Sigh.