Working under pressure

I just received word from the Director of Graduate Study that the Department would like to nominate me for a dissertation fellowship. Good news, right? Of course. It's an honor to be selected, especially given that each department is only allowed to nominate one student. The college then chooses one graduate student from the River Campus and the Music School for the award. The problem is that I've got to get all the material together by Monday. That means I'll be spending the next five days proofreading a sample chapter. I'll also have to make revisions to my prospectus because I wrote it two years ago--well before I could fully envision my actual dissertation. In fact, I still have a hard time "envisioning" the monster even though I've now written more than 50% of the damned thing. Ah well. It sure would be nice to receive the award so I'll do my best to get it all ready by Monday. The fellowship would prevent me from teaching next year, but that's just fine with me. I relish the thought of having a year off from teaching to simply finish the dissertation and prepare materials for the job search. I'm sure the competition will be stiff, so I won't count on it. What ever the outcome, it's nice to be given the opportunity to throw my hat into the ring.

On that note, off I go to start revising. It's going to be a hectic weekend.