I had to write out, in excruciatingly minute detail, my work schedule for the next four weeks or so. That’s all that’s left of school for this semester. I still have an ass-load of stuff to do, though. Three assignments for archives, and two for technology, including two research papers, and a crazy exam. Seriously, that technology exam is going to kick my ass. I understand everything, I’m just not up to regurgitating it for an exam. Didn’t I have enough of that as an undergrad? If the instructor wanted to assess our comprehension, I would have rather taken a series of short quizzes after each section, than this monster of an exam. It’s worth 60% of our grade, to boot. I’m not happy about that at all. But after Friday, it will be done with. I just have to make it to Friday.

Anyway, I made the schedule in Xcel. It’s a sort of chart-thing that says what I should be doing when and how long I have to work on things. It took an hour to make, but I think it’s worth it. My brain was getting jumbled with all the things to keep track of.

I’ve finished collecting sources for my papers, now I just have to read all of them. Argh. I think I’m on the right track, though, so I’m happy about that. I’m not really sure what my angle is yet for the Archives paper. My topic is loosely this: the history of the principle of provenance, and new developments. I can’t seem to get hold of any of the classic theory writing, but I have plenty of “rethinking the classics” type stuff that addresses the theories back in the day. I should be all set. It’s not really a research paper, anyway.  It’s more of a literature review type thing. I’ve selected several articles from a few different journals, three of which are published by different countries (Australia, Canada, and the US). I think I’m going to address their differences in approach to archival theory.

Interesting? Of course it isn’t. But I panicked when we had to choose a topic in the first couple of weeks of the semester, and I didn’t have any other ideas. I’m sort of stuck with it, and have to make the best of it. I’m sure it will be fine, I just have to get reading. Blargh. Papers.