My apologies to everyone for neglecting this blog for the last week and for missing the weekly Carnival of New Jersey Bloggers.

As a graduate student in pursuit of a Master’s Degree, I have a few major projects that I have to undertake before earning that piece of paper. Some of you may think of Graduate School as a place where someone completes a major thesis over the course of a year or as a place where you have to take a major “final exam” before being deemed worthy of graduation.

Well, the process is slightly different at my grad school in Rutgers. We’re required to complete a summer internship/applied field experience where we go into a public policy setting for a few months and then write an extensive paper on the policy issue that we studied. Folks, my paper is due this Friday (September 2nd). Don’t be concerned, though - the reason that I didn’t update last week is because I was writing the paper!

I have the paper complete and submitted to my professor for his comments. It was supposed to be a 20 page paper and as I write this, it is a 22 page paper. Chances are that by the time I’m done with it, it’ll be a 25 page paper…that may possibly act as the foundation for a future doctoral thesis…

Anyway! I have a lot of revisions to do on this paper. It’s been difficult cramming nearly four months of my summer internship into this paper, but both my Professor and I think that when this paper is done and written, there is a good chance that it could be publishable.

That’s pretty exciting for me, people. Not many graduate students are given the great opportunities that I was given this past summer and even fewer culminate their internship with their paper getting published.

Be on the lookout for more information as it comes!

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