Deadlines, damn deadlines

When I was getting ready to move to London last year, friends would ask me what was I going to study, where I was going, and when I would finish. My glib answer was that my dissertation would be due some time in August/September 2011, "but if I get my act together, you know, finish it early, I could just spend the rest of the summer travelling or something."

To which those friends should have rightfully said, "Yeah, right. Like that's gonna happen."

Oh, I wish they'd said that to me.

This is how the rest of my year looks:

• Now till March --- school, i.e. serious amounts of reading, thinking, digesting and discussion every week. Plus Korean class.
• End-February --- reading week, short break? But then I have all this reading and prep to do for ...
• Mid-March --- lit review for this other non-MA academic book project I'm doing.
• End-March --- writing grant application.
• April --- submit two three major essays that will determine my grade for the January-March university term.
• May --- two take-home exams.
• June --- short vacation? And work on that non-MA book project again. But then soon it'll be ...
• July/August --- dissertation madness. 13,000 words by the end of August.
• September --- sleep. And pack up to move back to Singapore.

Not to mention that the dissertation ought to be:

• Something that helps me get a decent grade on my MA (otherwise one of my scholarship sponsors will be less than pleased).
• Something that maybe I can, with some editing and rewrites, turn into a publishable item?
• Something that provides medium-/long-term direction for research/writing for myself.

Would also like to maintain/build friendships, see more of London and other countries, and not lose my mind.

This is why earlier this week, I tweeted/Facebooked:

7-day week not enough to get things done between now and March/April deadlines. 10 days a week, please. Thank you.

I realise it wouldn't actually solve the problem, merely move all my deadlines up by the corresponding number of days. But you know. A girl can dream vent.

Edited to add (23 January):
Further to the list above, I forgot to include:

• an essay on myth for a student journal that I want to write (deadline: March some time).
• two papers on different aspects of Singapore culture that I want to write about --- one could be a version of the student journal essay, the other is unrelated and has a fixed deadline in September.

Meep!