The term paper: a familiar nemesis

Posted by admin on Feb 17, 2010 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

The time has come. The room is tidy, cookies are baked, dishes washed, emails written, Facebook messages replied to, Twitter updated. Your roommates are cheering you on or respectfully ignoring you. Books are ready and music plays as you sip a legal stimulant, staring at the glowing screen. There are pages to write, with a long night awaiting you.

How did you get to this point, you wonder, when you had the entire semester to prepare? You knew what to do: start early, select a clear topic, generate reference lists as you go so that it doesn’t become a cumbersome chore at the very end, take notes, establish an outline, create a draft, edit and revise. You’ve done the legwork, as old battles have taught you well; yet starting has been a struggle of Sisyphean proportions.

There were less important things: watching the latest episode of Grey’s, checking your empty inbox for the twentieth time today, taking the extra hour to walk around the mall when you only came to buy a pen. There were more important things: hanging out with the brother you never see, running that fundraiser for your upcoming mission trip, comforting a friend who approached you in great need of prayer.

The reasons were painful, significant, riotously fun, unremarkably mundane, or simply born of fear keeping you from facing the inevitable. No matter. You have arrived at last at this electronic battleground, a white screen canvas awaiting your world-changing ideas. In the night’s dark hours, you stare at the figurative marble slab and finally begin to sculpt. Research guides you as you chisel away, ideas refined by wit and anchored in APA.

Ctrl+S becomes a secondary impulse. You email your paper to yourself multiple times just in case. Somehow, the frequent Facebook status changes and YouTube breaks fade away as you get into a rhythm of real work, throughout prayers of supplication and the dawning day. Somehow, it
comes together.

Minutes to spare, you stumble toward the nearest printer and breathe a sigh of relief at the familiar whirr of smooth white paper delivering your beautiful creation. Victory.