Anyone who has ever had to do a research paper for the Executive Fire Officer program knows the feeling (or any paper with a strict time limit, for that matter). You EFOites know the drill: Month 1- leave class with all intentions of saving the world; Month 2- finished lit review, all is well!; Month 3- stuff came up at work, need to get the budget finished, I've got some time left...Month 4- more stuff, I can get this done in a few days; Month 5- okay, I need to buckle down. Then, several weeks (or days for some of you), cram, cram, cram. Up until 2 or 2:30 working on it, APA manual is full of post-its, getting your citations in order, etc. etc.

Well, I have 12 days left and for all practical purposes, I'm done. It's all neatly packaged, summarized, etc. and I just need to run through two or three more proof-reading sessions to make sure it's looking goood (there's those extra o's again). This one was a lot of fun, if you are a fan of root canal. Unfortunately, it's a novelette at 119 pages, but that includes my "product" of action research, which for me, was a 5-year strategic plan for the US&R task force.

The first year I had dreams of that Outstanding Paper award, last year it was more along the lines of "Two-oh and go" (Chuck wouldn't like that) but I didn't do bad. This year, I think I may have actually done a pretty good job, but I don't see OP- not revolutionary enough. I mean, have you read those papers?

Well, after I get done with paramedic refresher tomorrow, I'll take my Huggies box of research material home and file it away for posterity.

Then I'll have a Crown and Ginger and start thinking about paper number 4.