A sense of incompleteness grips me as the semester and the academic year wind down, a feeling that it has been impossible to do justice to a multitude of tasks ever at hand. At times the academic schedule seems singularly artificial to me--an unnatural concentration of activity in a short span of time. It's feast or famine, a bipolar way of being, with half a dozen major projects to accomplish within a two-week period, followed by an abrupt end. We put ourselves into a manic state to burn the midnight oil in these final weeks. I, for one, would not object to a shorter summer break for the sake of a saner semester! Had I the time, I would take the time to deepen these explorations in improvisational writing, and to become a better juggler of multiple tasks.

But given the communal nature of the learning experience we have embarked upon in this class, we started together and we must end together. One could easily request an extension or "incomplete" on a conventional, individualistic project; but when the primary endeavor in the class is a collaborative process, then "completion" must occur in the context of participation in the group! We come to accept that in a process-oriented undertaking, our projects will always feel incomplete.

I do feel that the process of composing blogs and delving into others' offerings has opened my thinking to a world of issues. For every blog I have posted, there are a handful of potential essays I conceived but had not the time to bring to fruition. I would like to think that these seeds have not been sown in vain.