final week

One more week, 1.5 more papers to write, 29 more speeches to grade, and my first quarter will be over. What I've learned this quarter:

- 10 weeks goes by really fast
- the selection committee rocked because I love my cohort. Typically there's some abrasive asshole in the class, or the chick who can't stop talking because she wants to hear herself talk, or the "not the sharpest tool in the shed" student(s) who somehow slipped through during the selection process. None of those characters is in my cohort. What a far cry from my master's program. If Maya is reading this, I'm sure she is nodding and/or laughing.
- I'm not the smartest kid in the class anymore, not like back in elementary school where there wasn't too much competition. In fact, I sometimes wonder if I'm the dumbest. But everyone seems to be claiming that everyone else is smarter than him/her (including the insightful and articulate one who already has a book contract, jeesh). In any case, being a part of this program has been very very humbling and I have much to learn from my peers
- when you do not try to do a million things at once and just focus on one thing, that one thing is easier. I've managed to get through school without losing too much sleep but have sacrificed having a life.
- when you don't have a life and take the bus daily and eat at home and pack a lunch, you can live really really cheap
- it is possible to read 6 books, 2 huge reading packets, and other miscellaneous assigned readings in 10 weeks
- it is possible to write 11 papers in 10 weeks
- when someone dies (ie my professor) people gather to recall funny stories and say nice things about that person. I think people should do more of that when people are still alive to hear it.