When it comes right down to it, five pages is a lot of intimidating blank space. The thought of filling those five pages with thoughts worthy of being read by an AP Lang teacher didn't exactly fill me with undying enthusiasm. In fact, the entire process was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster: from passivity (reading the novel) to anxiety (finding sources) to confusion (forming a thesis) to more confusion (outlining) to frustration (writing the paper) to brief relief (procrastinating) to almost-fury (revising and editing).
Finally finishing the paper--about four hours before it was due,no less--came with a sense of accomplishment. It was probably the largest project I had ever undertaken single-handedly. However, I definitely would not say that it went as smoothly as I would have wanted.
A brief inventory:
The Good: My first research paper in college will hopefully not be such a disaster because I now know that watching YouTube videos for two hours will not induce a paper to write itself. (Yes, I was disappointed to learn this as well.)
The Bad: I'm convinced that Livebinders has some kind of grudge against me because it's seriously not normal for files to "accidentally" delete themselves as often as my sources did.
The Ugly: I averaged just below 4.5 hours of sleep for pretty much that entire week. Enough said.
All I have to say is that I'm thankful for intermediate deadlines because past Jiaxiu always overestimates future Jiaxiu and, well, bad things (i.e. neglecting every class to complete certain papers) happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment