Yesterday I would normally have been working at the library and then going to my computer lab to sort out problems with my homework. But I realized on Sunday that I wasn’t scheduled to work, and since my homework was already turned in, I didn’t need to foray down to Ann Arbor. A free day to spend at home, getting ready for the difficult final week ahead. What a gift.

Turned out that I spent most of the day trying to make headway on my last of this lifetime school group project. We have a massive paper to turn in next Monday. Each of the four of us has been working on sections of it, and now its time to bring the whole thing together. I and another student have committed to the editing of it, and she did the first pass through the paper. I struggled for hours just to get beyond the first couple of pages; the text of the paper feels so awkward, and its obvious that more than one person has written it. Plus it’s huge, and has way too many citations. We have 50 pages and almost 150 footnotes. I did what I could in about six hours, and turned it back over to the other editor. She spent most of the night and into the wee hours of the morning making much better headway. The paper is now back in my lap, but it feels more manageable now, though its still just as long.

Today, after my final web design lecture I will head over to work where I will help public library patrons work on the computer while I try to edit the paper. I want it to be done tonight; we’ll see. I need to be able to concentrate on the web finals that are coming up next week. I attempted to begin that last night after abandoning the group paper, but my head and neck hurt so much from the hours of paper struggling that I finally went to bed at 9 in self defense. Last night I was worried that nothing I read in my web design notes or saw on the web design lecture slides made sense. And that there was no way I could make any of it clear prior to the exams.

This morning, the world seems brighter. The sun is just popping out from among clouds, the sky is bright blue and filled with clouds, both dark, ominous black clouds and stark brilliant white puffs. The low morning sun makes the red brick of the university buildings glow. The air is warm, and there are blue flowers blooming under the shrubs. I am an hour early for lecture, and I have some sense of hope that indeed I can get this all done, and that all will end well.

A female cardinal calls from a tree as I open the door to West Hall and start up the stairs to the last lecture of my academic career.