I'm sitting here looking at a pile of paper consisting of about 30 pp. of print outs. The aforementioned papers consist of my collected syllabi for this semester. Frighteningly, I still have a few notes and pointers for the semester to print out, one of which illustrates the weekly one page "Reader Response Journals" required for each of the nineteen books on the syllabus for "Multi-culture Literature for Children and Young Adults," and the first is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is expected to be read and commented upon by next Monday.

You  may think I have a bit of a leg up, having been a book reviewer. And maybe I do, but the pressure I feel from being graded isn't like the pressure I felt to review on this blog. It's even more than I felt re: the columns I've written, though I should have allowed myself to feel a little more pressure for those. But that's another topic.

I must keep my perfect 4.0. Why? It's a personal challenge. I want to not only graduate, but to graduate with distinction. This means I'll be having the busiest semester of my graduate school career so far. I haven't pulled any "all-nighters" so far, unlike in my undergraduate years, but I may not only have to do that but take a few vacation days in order to keep up with the coursework. Good thing I get more vacation every year or I'd be in serious trouble.

I'm struggling not to run around screaming, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" But the syllabi look staggering right now. I just have to tell myself, "One assignment at a time."

Oy.