It's that time of year again....

You all know what I mean, or at least all of you who are or have recently been in university. It's the second crunch time of the year, right before the end, and you're just sprinting to get there. It's been creeping up on me slowly, but tonight, it's here, which means that a) I can't guarantee that when you see me I won't either be asleep or ready to explode and b) I also can't guarantee how much I'm going to be posting on here. Just to give you a taste of what's going on in the next month for me (my official "now I can stop to catch my breath" date is May 6th), here's my list of things to do:

• write a 16 page paper on the politics of a translation of a French catechism by a Puritan women in 1582 London. Includes research into catechisms, puritanism, criticisms of Elizabeth I; also includes reading lots of wonkily spelled English. Due on the 16th.
  

• write a 16 page paper on the women of Brokeback Mountain. Not quite sure what I'm doing here yet, but I have a feeling that I'll end up comparing the movie & print versions and look at how constructions of their gender work up against that of the men in the movie and women in other pieces of Western literature. Due on the 18th.
  

• mark 23 first year papers on which of three poems they've decided wins our fictional class medal and why. These are either going to be really great, or really scary, and I need to have them done by the 16th.
  

• start two new jobs. I'm now doing TOEFL prep with a student from South Korea, as well as working on exams with students with disabilities. This is on top of working with my normal King's student and editing papers for Margaret, Safiah, and Weei.
  

• prepare two conference presentations. The PhD students here have decided to have some fun with us and make us do a mini-conference about our theses on May 4th. After we finish that and go out drinking, I have to drive to Sackville and present at another conference the next morning. Going to be a crazy weekend.
  

• finish writing my thesis introduction. I've already got a chapter of my thesis done, so now it's time to do the intro so that I have something rational to say at the conference to go along with my chapter. Due May 1st, along with my thesis progress report.
  

• celebrate my birthday (Saturday). This is a maybe. I think I'll probably end up spending the evening in the library, but I might have to splurge on a bottle of wine. This is the reason that I hate when my birthday is. Everyone is always studying for exams!
  

So that's me, and hopefully you'll accept my apologies for not keeping up with this, which I know some of you rely on to distract you when you should be studying. But it works the same way for me, so hopefully I'll have something to write when I need a break from whatever it is that I'm doing. If you need me, I'll be on the 4th floor of Killam, and good luck to you!