Six days and counting....

My brain is feeling overstuffed right now and I'm starting to develop that panic that all the things I've read so far will just stay stuck in my brain when it comes time for the test. Not to mention the things I still feel as if I have to stuff into there yet. And I've still got a few student papers to mark that I've been putting off for most of the week, but they really need to get finished by Monday.

I haven't had any nightmares about the test yet, not like some of my colleagues...though I did have an odd dream about getting my wallet stolen (actually not the wallet, just everything inside it - I opened it up and all those little slots for your atm, credit cards, license etc. were empty) and another in which it took all class period just to take attendance because the students were all moving around looking for chairs to sit on, and I could not remember any of their names even though I recognized their faces. And I kept wandering around finding more students and having to ask them their names. Very odd....probably expressing some kind of fear about forgetting everything for the test and getting booted out of the program - then I wouldn't be teaching anymore either.

Part of me doubts that everything I'm doing to prepare is even going to be worthwhile or useful. After all, it's a comprehensive exam, and it's supposed to test my general knowledge of English literature. But it's not a general test like the GRE because the questions aren't that general. We're told on the one hand that the best way to study for the test is to re-read your class notes for the last year. But on the other hand, we're also told that the questions won't be class specific.

If that sounds as contradictory to you as it does to me, maybe e-mail me or something (click on Michele in the side bar), 'cause otherwise I'm gonna think I'm going batty. I mean, I realize what the difference is between the two, but it doesn't make it any easier to study. It means you have to constantly try to maintain this balance between the global and the specific - you need enough details to be able to write about the specifics of a particular genre, period, or theory, but you also can't lose yourself in those specifics while studying 'cause there's so many of them that you can't realistically cover every base.

You know, in actuality, everything that I will need to do for this test, I pretty much know already - at this point, it's just trying to refresh my memory and to integrate things that I've learnt at different times and in different places together into a cohesive schema.

But I've been in school for 8 years! That's a lot of integrating!

Well, enough retrospection...back to the books...