#gradschoolfun

You never know where it will take you or what road you will travel next. I am spending the next week finishing writing commitments. I will have the last four chapters of #YuleKnights to my beta by tomorrow night. There are four comp/fest pieces waiting in my Google Docs and then I am done for a few months. I have made my writer friends promise to smack my hand away from the “Sign Me up” button on fests and comps for the next few months because I am starting on the biggest challenge of my life - My Grad School research paper.

I am a math teacher by training (and 20 years in the classroom) and a mathematician at heart. I love poetry because there are patterns to find and create, just like in math. Writing prose has been a challenge over the last few years, but I feel like I have found a new way of hiding and finding patterns in writing.

This research paper is a new adventure, entirely. My classroom will become my laboratory. I will be looking at ways to change the way I present concepts to my students to see which methods truly help my students learn. The data collection and analysis is not what worries me. I do that everyday as a part of being a teacher. Writing up my research and then defending my writing is the scary part. This paper is the last hurtle between me and the completion of a goal I set more than 20 years ago, getting my Masters Degree. It is the end of a three and a half year journey of faith and hard work.

I will miss the creativity I find in writing fan fiction but I need to focus on the task in front of me. I need to give my students my full attention and there are new lessons to build. There are hard questions to ask about the way I teach and, hopeful, I can find some answer that will help my students and others outside of my classroom. No question ever got answered that was never asked ... so I am going to ask and see what answers I find.

I am fortunate to have a strong support system. My husband and children have there every step of the way, even when I was sure I wasn’t going to make it to the end of a course while trying to be a full time teacher, mother and wife. I’m sure I will be leanning on them more this semester as I freak out over making the words on the page match what I have seen happen in my classroom. My writer friends have been there, too. Offers to beta read my Lit Review are cherished and I will be asking for more beta reads this time around. They may not understand all of the “math talk” but they are amazing editors and I can never thank them enough for all their help. 

So, with that being said, February will be the beginning of my fan fiction writing hiatus. Plunnies will have to wait until my Grad School adventure travels it’s last road. I will write them down so they will not be forgotten, but one adventure needs to be finished before then next one can begin ...

Always, SquarePeg72