Wow, what a month it’s been. There’s a lot to unpack about my second-ever Winter Term, and it was totally different from the first, so I’ll start by talking about how I ended up doing an off-campus project in the first place.
Before you start harboring any concerns – no, I did not leave campus because I had a completely awful time staying for all of Winter Term last year. No, I wasn’t scared off by the cold (even if I was, that definitely came back to bite me. But we’ll get to that later). No, there weren’t any Winter Term demons last year that felt brave enough to come out and haunt my dorm while the campus was more empty (although that would have been cool). It was really just based on the fact that I hadn’t been home for most of last winter, so I wanted to spend a little time with my family this month before the semester started. Plus, I wanted to see what it would be like to run my own individual project.
While I liked the idea of a group project on campus or even an internship somewhere at home, I realized that I already had something I had been wanting to get around to doing for a really long time. The summer after my senior year of high school (yes, EONS ago), I started writing a novel. Well, ok – “novel” is a strong word for what it really was then. We’ll call it a rough beginning of a long story. Sort of. Basically, I had this really complicated idea for a plot with multiple perspectives combining my three favorite things – time travel, the 90s alternative rock scene, and World War II.
And yes. For the most part, Winter Term Me stuck with that original plot idea.
For tens. Of thousands. Of words.
Between all my classes and extracurricular stuff, I hadn’t been making much time for myself to work on it at all throughout the school year or into this past semester. And I didn’t have a solid Winter Term project in mind by November. So eventually, I just decided that maybe now would be as good a time as ever to try.
And let me tell you, it WAS. If there’s ever a point where you realize you’ve got something fun planned that you know you’ll have a blast doing but can’t ever seem to find the time to commit to, Winter Term is a great way to explore that. I’ve really grown to appreciate Oberlin’s Winter Term after designing my own project because of how much freedom you’re offered during January.
I got to work at my own pace, which was difficult but rewarding. I think I’ve really learned a lot about myself as a writer – my writing pace, where I start to get burnt out, how I deal with writer’s block, etc. And this project has also been a good way to curb my procrastination tendencies. Committing to a goal of thirty-five thousand words in a month isn’t really something you can do lightly. And now I know.
Being completely candid here – I still actually have A LOT of writing to do before I reach my total goal of seventy thousand words on the document. But I’m kind of proud that I created something this difficult for myself. I thought I’d end up designing a project that was too easy – something that would just leave me bored for most of the month. But I really feel like this ended up being a good way for me to maintain the feeling of having something to do. I know that’s gonna be really helpful when we go back to school in the next few days. It can feel a little like whiplash when you go a long time on a break without doing anything productive and then have to jump back in again to work and classes. But I feel like I’ve had a good balance of downtime and productivity sessions throughout January. Overall, I’d like to cautiously call this a success. Before I’ve actually reached my end goal for my novel. But whatever, I’ll get there.
I’ll talk a little more about how the month actually went – balancing writing time with seeing family and friends – in my next post. So stay tuned to hear more about why Oberlin’s Winter Term is completely awesome.
