I am experiencing a lot of stress lately.

Partly because of my financial issues. My sisters are putting their heads (and wallets) together in order to find a solution and get a least enough of the debt paid in order to make the school happy enough to wait for the rest. I imagine they won’t be able to make a lot of progress on that until tomorrow, though, as I somehow doubt there’s anyone answering the phone or emails at Kwantlen Accounts Receivable on the weekend.

So that’s one Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. ^[1] Then there’s my health. That knee of mine is still aching and paining away. Oh, and cramping and spasming. It’s not as bad as it was earlier in the week, but then again, I have been off of it for the most part since I got home Friday afternoon, plus it hasn’t been exposed to the cold since then.

But mostly right now,. it’s this damned final project for Intro to Journalism. The writing part, of course, is not a source of stress for me. In fact, if that was all that was involved, I would be doing fine. Heck, I would be done by now, and that’s including the time it would take me to write, proofread, tune up,. and polish.

It’s the goddamned research that is doing me in. Again. Just like with the annotated bibliography. For this assignment, worth 20 percent of my grade, I have to write an article arguing a position on one of the controversial issues we’ve dealt with in class (easy) and provide TEN different sources to back up our argument (hard).

And I find that extremely stressful. Add in the fact that I have three other big bad end of the semester assignments due some time in the next week or so, and you can see why my blood pressure (and anxiety level) is peaking.

Maybe I should take one of those lorazepams that Doctor Costin prescribed for me for when I need immediate stress relief. They’re right here in my kitbag. Oh look, somehow the childproof cap came off and now all the pills are gone. You’d think they would be lying around on the bottom of the bag, but no. Maybe someone stole them, I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t have any of them left. None. They are gone, gone, gone.

Because the universe hates me. Evidently.

Or to put that another way :

Good one, Universe. You let me have just a few moments of hope then popped a squat and shit all over it. That’s classic you.

So far, I have a rough draft of the text of the thing and four sources. And that is by cheating. I started out trying to find sources then come to a conclusion on the topic (whether the media should report suicides), but that went nowhere. I am just cut out for the job of taking in a shitload of information and extracting a decision from it.

Top down it is, then. Meaning I wrote what I wanted to write, and now I am finding the sources to back up what I said. And that is proving to be pretty hard as well. I don’t exactly argue in a “facts and sources” kind of way. I am not a scholar.

Instead, I end up with deadly amounts of option paralysis. Fuck.

And what really pisses me off is that the professor has done absolutely nothing to teach us  how to do these things. I mean, sure, students should be able to write an essay by the time they hit college, but I am pretty sure they are not teaching how to write an exhaustively researched academic paper in high schools yet.

And what the fuck does that have to do with journalism, anyway? I could totally see expecting us to write, say, a column or editorial, and to have three or four sources for it, but ten? Ten sources, both academic and journalistic, for a 1000 word article?

I really doubt actual journalism works that way at all.

It really seems to me that he just pulled this final assignment out of his ass. In fact, it really seems like he pulled the whole course out of his ass.  All we do is class discussion of issues related to journalism. He hasn’t actually taught us a damn thing.

So I feel like I am being forced to do something I really don’t like doing for no damned good reason and without anyone lifting a finger to actually teach me to do it.

No wonder I am under a lot of stress.

I am getting the distinct feeling that I mind end up doing a half-assed job on this thing not because I want to, but because I just can’t handle the demands of it. That’s a hard thing for me to admit, but I might just not be up to this thing.

Whatever happened to learning to crawl before you’re asked to run?

Honestly, I feel like the prof just mentally checked out of this Intro to Journalism class. At some point, he realized that he could get away with just running class discussion and that doesn’t require much effort on his part, so he just rushes through that in class without a single thought in his head whether or not he is actually preparing us for the work he is going to expect of us at the end of the semester.

I can only hope he will be generous in the marking of said assignments. It is the least he could do given how he completely failed to prepare us for it.

Even if I don’t get phenomenal marks on the assignment, I will still do pretty good in the course. So it’s not like there’s a hell of a lot on the line.

It just stresses me the hell out to be asked to do something that has absolutely nothing to do with the course matter and that I have not be taught to do or prepared for in any way.

Oh, and it’s due tomorrow, five minutes before midnight.

And I have three other monster assignments lurking after that one.

I really could have used one of those damn pills.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.