Deborah pauses, moistens her hands with chalk from the bag tied around her waist, and tightens the muscles inside her climbing shoes so that they curl more firmly around the footholds.
She looks down toward her feet to find the next sturdy foothold, then looks up. Look! The top of the wall! It looks so close now that her oral defense date is set for October 5, and now that all the written exams must be completed by next Thursday.
Only a few more footholds, she thinks. You can do this. Twelve hours of written tests down this month, eight to go. Three more in-house exams of two hours each, and finishing up that take-home before preparing for the two hour oral defense.
Her mental muscles are getting tired and a bit trembly, but the adrenaline is high. Surely she can push through. Moistening her hands once more, she takes a deep breath and moves one of them up toward the next handhold.
Onward and upward. Onward and upward.
Showing posts with label writing at olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing at olympics. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Speaking of Olympic Feats (2): NaWriMo 2 Word Count Update
ANNOUNCER (FROM OLYMPIC SPEED-WRITING CONTEST): And now for an interview with our sponsor, PhD student Deborah Leiter, who is caught in an end-of-semester graduate student speed-writing event that's sure to prepare her for the types of Olympic contests you see on our coverage here at Scribe Stadium. How's your contest--er, semester--going, Deborah?
DEBORAH: Yes. Mostly well, thank you. At least I turned in the first of three final semester papers just a few minutes ago. As it turns out, today in about 6 hours I not only revised 22 pages, which as you'll remember in the NaWriMo 2 scoring system counts for the equivalent of 2200 new words, but in the editing process the paper swelled to 29 pages for a total of 8816 new words, which is an addition of another 2000 or so entirely new words to the paper that will be exactly calculated at a later date.
ANNOUNCER: Wow, that's quite the new word count for a relatively short revise-and-polish period. So does this excess of new words bring you any closer to your word count total?
DEBORAH: Sadly, since it was all used up in one paper, the excess gets me no closer to my academic goals of finishing the semester. However, I am quite excited that I've gotten to the point in my academic career where I'm no longer grasping for words to say--seems I've got plenty of them to pour out. Now I'm just hoping I can only keep this up for 1 conference paper, 2 more course papers, and--these two are new tasks added just in the last couple of days--the revision of one book chapter by May 15 and the writing and revision of another one by May 20.
ANNOUNCER: Were there any deleterious effects from the quick outpour of words you've seen lately?
DEBORAH: Not, so far, from today's outpour. After Saturday's contest in which I poured out 20 new pages, though, my back was a mess of knots--and I was exhausted--from Sunday morning straight up until last night. Other speedwriting academic athletes, take heed when attempting such huge feats at home. I'll say one thing, though--all of this is certainly preparing me for the large amounts of quickly-written texts I'll have to pour out during my Big Nasty Tests in late August/early September. If all goes well there, maybe I'll actually be trained up enough to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge for real this coming November. We'll see how it goes.
ANNOUNCER: That's wonderful. And now, back to the Olympic event we've been covering...
DEBORAH: Yes. Mostly well, thank you. At least I turned in the first of three final semester papers just a few minutes ago. As it turns out, today in about 6 hours I not only revised 22 pages, which as you'll remember in the NaWriMo 2 scoring system counts for the equivalent of 2200 new words, but in the editing process the paper swelled to 29 pages for a total of 8816 new words, which is an addition of another 2000 or so entirely new words to the paper that will be exactly calculated at a later date.
ANNOUNCER: Wow, that's quite the new word count for a relatively short revise-and-polish period. So does this excess of new words bring you any closer to your word count total?
DEBORAH: Sadly, since it was all used up in one paper, the excess gets me no closer to my academic goals of finishing the semester. However, I am quite excited that I've gotten to the point in my academic career where I'm no longer grasping for words to say--seems I've got plenty of them to pour out. Now I'm just hoping I can only keep this up for 1 conference paper, 2 more course papers, and--these two are new tasks added just in the last couple of days--the revision of one book chapter by May 15 and the writing and revision of another one by May 20.
ANNOUNCER: Were there any deleterious effects from the quick outpour of words you've seen lately?
DEBORAH: Not, so far, from today's outpour. After Saturday's contest in which I poured out 20 new pages, though, my back was a mess of knots--and I was exhausted--from Sunday morning straight up until last night. Other speedwriting academic athletes, take heed when attempting such huge feats at home. I'll say one thing, though--all of this is certainly preparing me for the large amounts of quickly-written texts I'll have to pour out during my Big Nasty Tests in late August/early September. If all goes well there, maybe I'll actually be trained up enough to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge for real this coming November. We'll see how it goes.
ANNOUNCER: That's wonderful. And now, back to the Olympic event we've been covering...
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
If Speed-Writing Were An Olympic Sport (1)...
ANNOUNCER: And welcome back to Scribe Stadium. And we have two events going on here right now, actually.
We'll get to the fiction-writing battle in a moment, but for the moment, we're heading off to the most dramatic action in the other corner, where we have a...what is that? Over to our floor reporter.
FLOOR REPORTER: Thank you. Yes, over here we have a second year grad student in one of those social sciences/humanities disciplines squaring off against a seasoned professor in the academic paper-writing category. The grad student, of whom huge responsibilities are asked daily, is going against a prolific but tenured professor, whose output has fallen just a trifle in recent years but has the experience of years of efficient prose-production behind him.
It looks to be an epic battle here this evening, as the grad student's "therefores," "nonethelesses" and frequent quoting from the text go up against the professor's facility in citing several dozen theorists and carefully explicating their positions before an eyelash is batted...
I'm excited to see how it all plays out. For now, though, we have to take a break, but don't leave your seat. You'll want to stick around for this one...
We'll get to the fiction-writing battle in a moment, but for the moment, we're heading off to the most dramatic action in the other corner, where we have a...what is that? Over to our floor reporter.
FLOOR REPORTER: Thank you. Yes, over here we have a second year grad student in one of those social sciences/humanities disciplines squaring off against a seasoned professor in the academic paper-writing category. The grad student, of whom huge responsibilities are asked daily, is going against a prolific but tenured professor, whose output has fallen just a trifle in recent years but has the experience of years of efficient prose-production behind him.
It looks to be an epic battle here this evening, as the grad student's "therefores," "nonethelesses" and frequent quoting from the text go up against the professor's facility in citing several dozen theorists and carefully explicating their positions before an eyelash is batted...
I'm excited to see how it all plays out. For now, though, we have to take a break, but don't leave your seat. You'll want to stick around for this one...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)