Studious

Here is what I've learned so far as a master's student.

1. I'm not as smart as a I thought I was. So painful.
2. Being a writer is not as much of an asset as I thought it would be.
3. The idea that I really liked being a student as an undergrad now seems foreign to me. Either I romanticized my college days or I'm out of my depth at master's level.
4. Time management is not my forte. Other students seem to be able to quickly hop in and out of articles and grab something to add to their bibliography. I tend to laboriously read through all 40-70 pages of each academic article, trying to understand how the author reached the conclusion. Now I don't know how to turn thousands of pages of articles into six coherent essays in which I explore a range of complicated legal topics and express my thoughts.
5. I really dislike footnotes.
6. Now that I need to get beyond the assigned readings to do my own research, I don't know where to start. Hopefully a kind librarian will help me learn how to sort through the academic literature to flesh out my idea. Once I have an idea.

On the bright side, I had brunch today with a group of students, three from Belfast, one from Kazakstahn, and one from England. All three of the Belfast students have at least one parent from another country and everyone at the table was multilingual except yours truly. They are all recent graduates in either law or criminal justice, so none of them are stressing over the papers. They were all polite and good natured so it was fun to hang out with them for a while.
11-23.