Three More Weeks!

Hard to believe I only have three weeks left of the semester...Well, sort of. Three more weeks of classes, that is. After that comes final exam weeks; I don't have any exams, thankfully, but I do have several final projects, two of which are due during the final exam period. So in reality only one of my classes will be done in three weeks; for that one the final project is due on the last day of class. I guess the professor doesn't want to draw things out.

In addition to finishing up projects for this semester I'm also still working on coming up with an idea for the capstone project I'll be doing next semester. Proposals are indeed due the Tuesday before Thanksgiving—at least that's what the e-mail from the professor teaching the class said. I replied and "suggested" making the due date the Tuesday after Thanksgiving might be better than the Tuesday before. He agreed that was reasonable so I, at least, will be doing my proposal over the Thanksgiving break. (Ok, what I really told him was if I had to do anything more before Thanksgiving it would be the straw that breaks this camel's back. At any rate I got an extension for this particular assignment for a class that hasn't actually started yet...) I'm still looking around and waiting for that epiphany of a project that will be really interesting and exciting to do over the semester. Next week I'm going to look at previous projects in the hope that will give me some ideas. (They're stored in a particular bookcase in my department, behind a locked door that not everyone has a key to, I've discovered. I've now talked to a professor who has a key who will make sure the door is unlocked when I plan to be there next week... And to think this is the easy part!)

For those of you who read my post on my user interactivity project I'm happy to report that it's coming along. I'll be giving my presentation to the class on Thursday. I talked to my professor about my concerns and he agreed that my revised focus is a good one. That means I'm looking at how companies implement user interactivity but I'm not trying to assess how well companies incorporate user content into official documentation or how effective their efforts are, since I would need inside knowledge to determine both of those. I also talked to someone in my field about the project: Sarah O'Keefe is a leader in the technical communications industry and just happens to live and work in my area. (I initially contacted her via Twitter, believe it or not.) I met with her at her office and got valuable insight into how she views user interactivity with documentation and what companies need to do to embrace it.