After having dragged my MFA thesis for five fricking years, I finally completed the core writing part of the paper today. Even though it only took me a few hours to set up the structure and layout of the paper, the writing took a lot longer because too much has been going on in the past month and a half. It took me about a day to write the first 1/3 of the paper, the rest kept getting dragged on because I had to figure out what I needed to do with the project itself. And once the project requirements took shape, the rest was just a matter of putting ink to the paper (so to speak).
The most trouble I had with the paper was locating some of the resources I needed. Just the MLA format alone was hard to pin down because each website I Googled has a slightly different way of doing certain things. Jason said that’s because MLA changes its format slightly with every edition it publishes.
My tolerance for MLA is about to rip.
But regardless of the formats, I found a pretty awesome website that generates all the appropriate structures and in-text citings for you, provided you give them the right information — EasyBib (short for “easy bibliography” I think; there’s no fee for generating bibliographies; but not free for more advanced stuff). The next best thing is DianaHacker.com. It has a very complete documentation of how each type of structure should be used in different types of papers. But it is still confusing when I find things that easybib.com and dianahacker.com don’t agree on…
Now that the thesis is almost done, maybe I should try to book a ticket to Savannah just so that I can take care of the rest of the paperwork in person. The winter quarter ends on March 9th. I am cutting it pretty close having to revise the paper and the project, get everything signed by everyone on the thesis committee, get everything to the library for archival and make sure nothign slips through…
I can’t wait to taste the sweet joy of getting that Master of Fine Arts diploma and never have to hear my mom nag about it again… FOREVER!
I sent the paper for everyone on the thesis committee to go over. Now I can spend the weekend reviewing for my accounting exam for next Wednesday… I am so screwed in that class… Stupid accounting…