Day 1: Anxiety Builds

Have you ever gone to the first day of class and realized that the load they are asking of you will be way more than average for a 3-hour course? We have to have topics picked and much of the preliminary research done for a 10-12 page paper within two weeks. I have to turn in an annotated bibliography in two weeks, but how will I know how a particular resource is relevant to my topic if I don't have a really firm understanding of the resource itself, my topic, it's breadth/scope, and what I need to look for in resources? That stuff evolves with the research.

Writing 10-12 pages isn't the issue: if you have something to say, 10-12 pages is often not enough space. What is daunting is being required to have most of the conceptual stuff, including having something to say, completed and written down within the first three weeks of the course.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll "work it out" in my head and figure out how to give them what they want, but for now, it seems like a big challenge.

And that's just one of the two major papers I have this semester. I'm going to go blind doing the required reading for these courses, much less the "optional" reading that would really help me to get a grasp on what's being taught.

Day 1. ::sigh::