Crazy idea?

Now, after taking the staggering amount of four years (normal: two) to finish my 'Hauptstudium', the main part of my studies in one of my two subjects, I'm thinking about trying to finish the main part in my *other* subject in less than one (normal: two - of course, those are usually the *same* two years in which your also finish your other subject.) I'm quite old for a student, even for Germany (and we have the oldest students in the world, I think), and with every semester I spend at university, my chances of finding a job - and/or getting a Ph.D. - are diminishing.

If I write one big paper and one small paper this semester, a second big one in the holidays, and the last, small one in the next (and last?!) term, and start preparing *like crazy* for my thesis during that last term already, I *could* manage to get my proposal in by February next year. Which means I'd be writing from, err, I think March through August, or possibly October. Final exams in November.

Oh, and I have to wedge in another excavation somewhere, too, because I'm still missing two or three weeks of dig time.

The one drawback of this approach, aside from the fact that it means non-stop stress until November 2008 (and we all know how well I deal with stress... *sigh*), is that I'd have to rush writing my papers, which might result in not-so-great grades, which might diminish my - already slim - chances of being able to do a Ph.D. (ETA: no, wait, I'm stupid. Or rather, tired. Actually, the grades don't have anything to do with my final grade, so I should be fine. Whew.) Also, I haven't laid much of a 'foundation' yet for a thesis - I have no idea at all what I might write about (or rather, I have too many ideas, and they're too vague), and I feel I still need to read a great deal more 'theory' before I can really even start thinking about formulating a proper question on any of the topics that I find interesting.

(Dammit, why am I suddenly crying? I'm not unhappy. Not even all *that* scared. It must be the music. Or possibly the momentary relief of feeling a hint of determination. I'm sure that determination will pass, though. I'm not good at remaining determined, and nineteen months is a long time.)

ETA: If I manage this, then by the end of 2008 I'll have completed a five-year course of study in just under seven years (eight, if you count the year abroad). Granted, I changed one of my subjects, but even with that change it shouldn't have taken me longer than six years at worst.

Still, better seven years than seven and a half.

Abandoned meta from the past! Methos, with a lesson for LoM(?)

When cleaning up my old notes and paperwork recently, I found several abandoned drafts for - sadly unfinished - meta posts. I don't really have the time to clean them up and make them presentable (or add substance to the 'thinner' ones), but I also don't quite feel like simply throwing them away. So, maybe, I'll be posting a few of them here. Or at least I'll be posting one today. It's a - fairly unspectacular, really - bit of Methos meta, but I think it may actually be of some interest for Life on Mars fandom, too, as it deals with canon inconsistencies/insufficiencies and fannish reactions to those. Essentially, it's a bit like the 'canon vs. fanon' situation we have in LoM now, only that in LoM we're still struggling with declaring our mental independence from canon. HL fandom has a lot more practice in that department, as large parts of HL canon have sucked, or at least been severely disappointing, throughout the history of the franchise, and the fandom has been feverishly 'fixing' things for more than fifteen years now... (There's a difference, though, in the fact that the *majority* of HL fandom sees a need to fix things, whereas in LoM fandom only a very small minority feels that way.)

Anyway, this particular bit of meta is not really about the fixing of HL canon in general, but about one character who, arguably, is so very fascinating to fans because he was probably not planned but rather improvised by the writers, which shows in his characterisation... i.e., our fascination, and the fanon versions of his character that we love, are *based* heavily on the fact that *the source text is flawed*.

( Here goes the old, abandoned Methos meta. )

ETA: This really hardly even deserves the title 'draft'. It needs fleshing out, it needs structure, it needs lots of things... but I don't have the time.

ETA2: I think the point I was trying to make was that, no matter *how* we interpret him, a certain degree of 'fixing things' is always involved in developing a fannish relationship with Methos.

Gah. My brain is completely fried today. I need to think more about the parallels and differences here - because there *are* differences between the LoM and the HL situation, though I can't quite put my finger on them yet.