Finals

This has been quite a day. I managed to turn in a 16-page paper (which was worth 100% of my grade for this class) without staying up all night, which for me, is quite an accomplishment. In fact, I finished the paper just a little after 12:30 last night. Then I still had time to read over and revise most of it before it was due at 3:00 pm today. That's the first paper I've written as a grad student that I actually had time to review before handing it in. Lots of prayer, combined with better time management, and an outline sped things up considerably. (I've been taught the usefulness of starting with an outline, by my wonderful boyfriend, James. It's amazing what it a difference it makes when you have an idea of where you're going before you try to get there!)

I also experienced a bit of a fiasco today with regards to the student journal I'm working on. I met briefly with one of the authors I edited for and got his signature saying that the article was ok to be published (and that he won't sue us and whatnot). I was in a hurry (due to the looming paper deadline) and didn't communicate very well with him. We are in the final stage before publication, which means that any changes mean a lot of extra work (a point I understood vaguely but not in concrete terms of time). Therefore, I neglected to make the amount of extra work obvious enough in my email to him and he had quite a few suggestions, and since I was in a hurry I just said ok. After emailing them to the chief editor she wrote me a lengthy email explaining why most of the changes couldn't be made, which I stupidly forwarded to the author. This made the author unhappy, (although he dealt with it in a fairly kind way) and I'm sure it made the chief editor unhappy since he sent his reply to her and it was obvious that he was unhappy and slightly offended. So much for good communication. I should know to just set things aside when I'm in a hurry rather than rushing through them just to get them off my back. Sigh!