I Survived.
Huzzah! Huzzah! A thousand times, Huzzah!
This afternoon, for the first time since August, I feel relaxed. After weeks of continuous paper writing for credit, I can finally write for pleasure.
This morning I put the finishing touches on a long paper about gendered literary criticism in early eighteenth century England, hopped on my bicycle, and rushed to Turlington Hall, where it was due by noon. With it was another paper discussing whether Alexander Pope was mocking or exalting Belinda in Rape of the Lock. Under better circumstances I would not have had to turn in two papers simultaneously, but, as things turned out, it was necessary. Professor McCrea, for whom I wrote these papers, does not enforce deadlines: as long as you turn in all your work by the last week of the semester, you’re fine. Since he was flexible, and my five other teachers were not, I took advantage of the latitude he gives, and turned in two papers today, at literally the last possible minute. These two papers–sixteen pages of writing–represent my entire semester’s work for him. That put me under a tremendous amount of pressure over the last four days as I wrote one and then the other. I’m not in love with these papers, but they’re of reasonably high quality, so I am sure I’ll do fine.
These last two papers came on the heels of three papers–twenty-three pages–due last Tuesday. Add to that several finals and another two papers due the week before, and you can get a feel for the pressure I’ve been under. A great deal is riding on this semester.
I’ll write more very soon, and maybe even post samples of what I was writing (some of it was actually very interesting), but right now I am going to watch some television.
Wow, I feel relieved. Maybe not stay-of-execution-level relief, but certainly released-on-a-technicality-level relief.
Filed under: School on December 14th, 2009 | No Comments »