My last non-dissertation paper is "due" tomorrow.

There, I said it. And even "out loud," so to speak. I need to set a due date for myself and stick to it, even if it requires an all-night writing party tonight. Putting this date up on the blog will (hopefully) make me stick to this deadline. It's not an impossible one.

The paper I mention here is one I need to complete in order to transfer in a course from my master's degree. It's not a tough paper, but it's just not directly related to my dissertation or much else I'm interested in, for that matter. My motivation for this is practically non-existent, therefore, and yet I'm putting this in front of my dissertation priorities because I need it done before I even consider defending my dissertation proposal. However, with other aspects of life going as they have been going lately, I've needed a break from school. Let's call it my "fall break." Net result: nada, nichts, rien, nothing has happened with the dissertation since a few paragraphs were written at the beginning and end of the writing retreat a couple of weeks ago.

Guess I need to give myself a break about this hiatus and get my assets back in gear. Actually, when I reflect on the experience of writing this one last paper, it IS serving the purpose of getting my brain around this literature (organizational behavior) and it COULD help as a part of my dissertation literature review. Or, at least, it could help my thought process on explaining the effects of a university's organizational structure on fostering (or hindering) academic identity development.

Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch, but at this point in my career I need to have a tangible reason for writing a paper!

Wow, this turned out to be a cathartic post. I think I'm actually going to focus a bit more on this bugger of a paper now.

Thanks to anyone actually reading this purge of my rather full brain!