I truly believe that one of the most interesting phenomena involved in essay season is the point of no return. It hits people in different ways.
Some people get stressed, lock themselves in their rooms, and refuse to dress themselves or shower for days. For a shower becomes the reward for every correctly placed comma, period and citation.
Some avoid the work. They dance and laugh and scream about campus because life with friends is better than life with essays. The problem with that logic is that if life is exclusively with friends, the essays come back to haunt (failing grades included).
Some work weeks ahead of time in order to perfect every word, sentence and paragraph. They spend hours with books, dictionaries, thesauruses, headphones and library cards. They note-take, highlight, sticky note, and organize every bit of information they come across.
Or some, like me, procrastinate. They don't procrastinate in the name of friendships or fun, movies or entertainment. No, they procrastinate because it is what they have learned to do. Consequently, this procrastination stems into a flower of caffiene, late nights and excellent papers. Don't ask me how, but these people (myself included) get worse marks when they have done weeks of preparation, than when they have written the paper the night before it is due.
Further, I am the type of the person who reads and takes notes during the process. So, my procrastination, paired with the strict attention to detail, causes me to, well, look depressingly at my daunting stack of books.
Sometimes I get essay topics I like (example: current paper being written on the history of literary criticism regarding Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glasss by Lewis Carroll). They stem into sub-topics (Freudian interpretation, Feminist interpretation, theory of text interpreted as political/cultural allegory), or sub-sub-topics (cultural and historical surroundings of text and how they relate to previously mentioned sub-topics). Sometimes I get essay topics I do not like (an article review on something pertaining to the History of Africa), and everything that can go wrong, will (the missing 'Pocket Guide to Writing in History' which is necessary for the article review, since it outlines how the professor would like it written and cited). Other times, the essay topics cause conflict with normal class work (reading 76 pages of 'The Ode Less Travelled' by Stephen Fry, completing a '5 senses' poem, reading Midsommer Night's Dream, 3 chapters of African History). Still other times, surprise work comes (an email from a professor, informing me that, in order to remain enrolled in a 400 level creative writing course - I am the only 3rd year registered for it - I must have a 15 page portfolio handed in by Wednesday) and complicates an already disgusting life of work even further. Other times still, extra curriculars call, and offices need to be cleaned.
This is the point of no return for me. Normally, students will hit that point back at the second essay. I may have also hit that point at the second essay, but luckily for me, insanity is a very large part of my life, off-setting the realization that I'm in over my head.
I have 4 VERY solid days of homework coming up.
I also discovered that, in order to graduate with a double honours major and a minor, I will need to stay at Redeemer for an extra year, as I have 21 courses (and 4 semesters...5 courses a semester...yes, that's the right math) that I still need to take. It is a very good thing that I LOVE school.
Word of the Day: brain-dead
Quote of the Day: "England would be merely a free-floating political aggregate held together by nothing more glorious than money or self interest, devoid of its once cherished cultural and spiritual landmarks - a godless place not unlike the chaotic underground into which Alice falls i her first adventure, or the 'backwards' world she discovers just beyond the comforting bourgeios looking-glass." - Donald Rackin
