Slight freakout ahoy!

I'm thinking I  may just have to call this "The Continuing Travails of Our Graduate School Experience".  That sounds kinda nice and old-timey...or, considering I just read the quoted title again, like I have several personalities just yearning to burst out.

We, uh, I'll never tell...

Got an A on my literature review so yay me :).  I spent yesterday morning working on my part of our first group project and I think I have a decent handle on my portion of it.  I'm part of the Federal Highway Administration and part of a group concocting a memo to our director re: a several-billion-dollar multi-year project.  My part is to highlight the positive way this project can have an effect on our relationships with our lobbyists.  We're all meeting online tomorrow night to discuss/show what we've come up with so far for our separate taskings.  And, of course, someone brought up in class how when you work in groups there is always someone who doesn't pull their weight and blah-blah-blah, it's not fair and how is that going to be dealt with?  I did love my professor's answer - which was essentially welcome to the real world.  Apparently we do get to all grade each other at the end of the course but, hello, not everyone in the work world pulls their weight so...suck it up, buttercup and get on with it.

My research project is approved!  This is good but also scary since this will evolve into my thesis over the next two-three years (depending on how many classes I cram in each semester and if I end up moving or not).  I'm researching gender equity amongst faculty at four-year state universities using salary and promotion as my focus.  Considering my annotated bibliography is due next month, I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time stuck in databases and then at Guillermo's trying to put all this in coherent form.  It's a proven formula from my undergrad days:  laptop + coffee + iPod = completed paper.

So, you know, slight freakout but  more in the "Aaah!  Paper writing!  APA style again!" versus the full and complete Kermit the Frog arm-waving freakout I was having just before classes started.  Improvement! :)