Things have been heating up on the academic front. During the past couple of weeks, I've had to complete a short written assignment for Policy, a research assignment for Research, and a draft paper involving an interview, writing AND research for Human Behavior. I haven't actually written a paper in 18 years and have never used the APA format/method of citation that SSW requires. But collecting full text articles for the Human Behavior paper and compiling the abstracts for the research assignment in Research were much more significant struggles for me.

I realize I am dating myself in writing this, but when I stopped working nine years ago, the internet was just beginning to really gain steam in the legal profession. I saw this one coming. This is where I feel my age as compared to “the young'uns� in my classes. The last time I did this sort of research I was an undergraduate and back then research consisted of flipping through a bound index, pulling hard copies of articles off the shelf and pressing a button on a copier. Indeed, just to ease my discomfort, I did wander through the deserted aisles of the Health Sciences Library, retrieve a hardbound version of a journal and copy my desired article. I saw no one else in these aisles; clearly there was a more efficient way to do this and I needed to learn how. Actually, though, once I had reassured myself that my “dinosaur method� of obtaining a resource still existed, I felt a little more relaxed about experimenting with the electronic approach.

After spending way too much time collecting my research articles (and winding up with MORE than the 10 required sources!) I hastily drafted up my Human Behavior paper. ‘Not the best paper I've ever written by a long stretch. But, given my steep learning curve on the technology side of things, coupled with the time constraints of the the assignment and my own work and family obligations, I felt this was my best effort as I walked into class (late, again, after a 2 hour drive to Baltimore in traffic!!! More about this in another post…).

We exchanged our papers in class so that our classmates could correct the APA formatting errors in the draft paper. Leaving class, I knew there were plenty of things wrong with my paper. The “go for the A� part of me was smarting a bit. But I realize, too, that this academic experience is different. My time is not entirely my own. When one part of an assignment takes longer than it should, the other parts are going to suffer; I just don't have the luxury of the time to offset things. But, perhaps for the first time in my “academic career�, I am ok with this. So far, at least, it seems more important to me to feel like I'm progressing toward a goal that feels right, even if road is not paved with A's. I really hope I can sustain this perspective in the months ahead.