Comps #3 -- just an update

I am so fucking tired I can't even tell you; I'm behind on MY schedule for comps, but way ahead in regards to the deadline. I have until December 1st, midnight, CST, to write 15 pages. No problem, I have all of this week, all of next week, and all of the week after up to and including Saturday. Now, I expect to be done with #4 this weekend. I'm a coupla days behind on finishing #3, but all I have left of it now is the introduction and I want to organization the middle part just a bit better.

So then what? Well, starting tomorrow (maybe Wednesday) I start researching what I need for #4, then spend time writing it up this weekend. Should be fairly easy to do I think, but nothing is a given. Once I'm done this weekend, I'll have next week to go through and proof everything, organize, and submit for a plagiarism report (can take a day or two for that). So if that happens, I'll be turning my comps in one week early.

I don't expect to pass these to be honest. I'm tired, I'm juggling work and everything else, plus I won't get much help this week with watching my son. It's hard to put him to bed at 8:30, then come down and read/write, get to bed, and then get up at 7 the next day. I'm getting help, but it's not enough. This is hard.

If I don't pass them all the first go, I hope that I just fail maybe one or two at most. I have two weeks to rewrite the ones that don't pass, but I was told that they will tell me why they didn't pass so that I have direction. The biggest complaints I was told were related to bad structure and not answering the question. I'm not concerned about structure at all, but I do want to make sure that I answered the question properly.

If I don't pass these, even after a rewrite, I'm going to feel as if two years of my life were wasted. I could have spent all of that time with my boy, working on my house, starting my own business, something like that. I won't be happy at all. I really want this PhD, but the truth is, I may simply not be PhD quality. Hell I don't know, I tend to think negatively anyway. I'm not a positive thinker as I think that it's not conducive to reality. I guess I hope for the best and plan for the worst.

I really wish there was a god to whom I could pray. So anyway, since I have about a page left to write for #3, which seems to have gone quite well anyway, I should be starting question #4, the final one, tomorrow. This is the one I wrote myself, so it's a bit easy to write about I feel. I'm somewhat familiar with the subject matter, but the gist of the question is a compare/contrast followed by a locate and analyze portion. These are easy to do really, but they're very informative. I can't tell you all what it's about (as if I have readers), and I can't post my questions/responses later either. Suffice to say, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. Pass or fail, I'm a better person.

I don't know if I've addressed this or not, but I don't allow comments here. The reason is that this is my little space to vent my frustrations, speak my mind, other things. I often talk about my hate of religion and my love of science and critical thinking. I can be quite crude and crass at times; it's just my nature I assume. I really don't have any desire to get into an online debate; I've heard all of the arguments before, I've seen the arguments dismantled by science, yet they keep coming back. If you're a regular reader of mine, well, thanks. I'll turn on commenting when my comps are over, I'd love to know who comes here.

Off to bed,

Richard