I've grown soft. Not that I ever realized I was hard. As an undergrad, I thought I had the life. Write my paper two days before it was due? Pah! I scorn the thought. I'll write it the night before it's due, staying up until early morning light peeks through the windows and I'll like it.I want to call it English major tendencies, but I guess everyone did it. It's just a little harder to save an entire chemistry experiment for the last night when a solution needs to set for 10 hours and the lab closes after 9. So guess it was more prevalent amongst English majors because we could. Particularly once Internet research became accepted in academia. Not only could I wait until the last night to write the paper, I could sit down after dinner that night and start my research!
Those were heady days, living on the edge. Waiting until the last minute to write feverishly on a paper. Telling myself I'd be better next time, I'd start early, maybe even get it done *gasp* a day ahead of time. And proofread! For content! And yet, my procrastination tendencies would take over and it would happen the same way the next time.
I think it was addictive. I knew I was a good academic writer. Since senior year in high school when I slapped the five-paragraph paper on the ass and called it my bitch. I could think of a thesis, create supporting ideas and nail down textual quotes like nobody's business. So if I gave myself plenty of time to write a paper, where was the challenge in that? It was the papers I wrote at 2:00 am that I got back with As that filled me with satisfaction. Especially when I re-read them and realized not only were they acceptable—some parts were actually pretty well written! I would muse, "If I'm this good under pressure, I wonder what I would write like with more time?" I honestly didn't know.
In grad school, it became a little tougher. I'd been out of college for 1.5 years. Not long, but long enough for the typical undergrad paper length to change from 5 pages to 10. Um, that's quite a leap. Math majors might call it "double." And grad students? Fifteen to 20 pages. I might call that "a hell of a lot more than double, and a really freakin' long paper."
The motivation was also difficult because, where I might have been able to convince my boyfriend to read a 5-page paper I was proud of as an undergrad, he would take one look at my 18-page grad level Lit. Theory paper on "A Psychoanalytical Reader-Response Analysis of Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak" and probably fall over, dead asleep. It would take two episodes of Sportscenter to revive him. So now I was writing papers that were three times longer, that would only be read by myself and my professor (and, to be perfectly honest, I only skimmed the finished version), and I had the same amount of time to do it in. Because if you're going to procrastinate, you can not start a paper while it's still light out the night before. That doesn't count. Oh, and I worked full-time.
In my class on Toni Morrison, a mousy girl was talking one day about how she'd stayed up the ENTIRE night working on an assignment for class. I looked at her.
"Do you work?" I asked.
"No," she replied. Which meant she'd stayed up all night to complete her paper ... and then slept 8 hours to awake refreshed and ready for our evening class. That, also, does not count. You need to write your paper, take a shower while it's printing out, and be ready for a full day ahead.
So anyway, it's been a while since I've experienced that. And now I feel old because I didn't feel the same rush. The heady excitement of being under the gun. Mostly I was tired and cranky. It sucked.
Since quitting my job, I've been applying for freelance writing jobs left and right. And until last Thursday, nobody cared. Before you ask—No, I did not send them my paper about reader-response to Parrish's Daybreak painting or the shorter, yet more intimidating 14-page paper on "Chaucer's Psychological Motivation for Feminist Elements of The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale." And yet, no writing assignments.
Until Friday, that was, when I was assigned 30 articles—all due by Monday evening. This is why I spent my entire weekend researching and writing. Writing and researching. Even so, I still missed my deadline—to have everything turned in by 6 o'clock Monday evening. I finished the last article at 11:00 pm, 5 hours past deadline.
It was my fault, really. I took breaks occasionally. I talked to people. I even slept for a few hours on Saturday night. I went to Keith's work party, for heaven's sake! If you're going to procrastinate (or, in this case it was out of my control), when you finally start writing you'd damn well better dedicate yourself to the cause or all is lost.
And it really, really sucked. Maybe it was a good reminder that, as much as we all may talk about "those good old college days," we most definitely cannot go back. Although after sending off the last article, I did have a hankering for Papa John's pizza, breadsticks with cheese sauce, and a 2-liter of Coke.
