Day 23

Papers are the bane of my existence. In the interest of saving themselves stressful deadlines at the end of each term, professors now assign copious amounts of essays rather than basing grades on a final exam. This sounds like a great idea on paper because it saves time studying. When every professor does this, though, the papers take on lives of their own.

I wanted to get ahead of the curve and finish my papers early this week so I could focus on actually doing the readings before attending lectures (for once). This was easier said than done, though, because of the sheer number of papers I have due this week and the ambiguity of the assignments.

For instance, I was writing my paper for Saturday's class today. We had to analyze "the company's" decision to open a factory in "a new country." Unfortunately, the professor didn't tell us what the company was, what country it was opening a factory in, or even what kind of factory it was opening. This left our paper very open-ended; besides the strict 600-word limit, that is.

So I sat down with my trusty laptop and tried to start typing. The little blinking cursor seemed to absorb all of my creative energy, though, and I wasn't able to figure out even how to put a heading on the paper. I'm not sure if it was regular writer's block of the fact that I had been staring at the computer screen for hours, but I couldn't seem to put anything into the word processor.

So instead I pulled out a few blank sheets of paper and my old familiar friend: Mr. Pencil. I started by putting my name on the paper so no one else could claim it as theirs. Then I added the professor's name and the course title so I wouldn't confuse it with any of my other courses.

Then, just to get myself started, I pulled up the essay question and wrote it by hand at the top of the paper. The act of writing the question must have activated something in my brain because I just started writing. I even implemented quotes from the readings I had done for class without having to refer back to my notes. I was on a role!

Until Laura sat down. She's one of the most annoying people in class. I think she acts so loud as she does to make up for her height (or lack thereof). Either way, my rapidly-flowing train of thought shattered as she started talking. I set down my pencil in frustration; I had stopped in mid-sentence and couldn't even remember where the thought had been going.

I pulled my laptop open again and started searching for random things as a way to try to ignore the whiny voice of the short person sitting (or standing, I'm not really sure) across from me.

"So what do you think class will be about tonight," she asked.

"No idea," I muttered as I read today's headlines.

"Has the professor sent out slides yet?"

"No idea."

"What about tomorrow's class?"

"I don't know."

"Have you finished the paper for tomorrow yet?"

I successfully spaced her out at that point as she went into a long diatribe about how she hadn't started her paper yet. She mentioned something about being a procrastinator and how hard things had been during her undergraduate. I heard the word "counselling" and chuckled as I began doodling in the margins around my not-yet-completed essay. I spaced Laura out so completely that I didn't even notice when she left.

I kept doodling and drew dogs, houses, and birds all over my paper. Then I started drawing mouths. I started with some smiley faces and then focused on just the mouth. I had happy mouths, sad mouths, and apathetic mouths. Then I drew an angry mouth. It was more intricate than the rest and I spent a lot of time making it look realistic; almost hungry.

Then the mouth opened wide, like a snake would to swallow an egg. It opened so wide that I felt my chair tottering towards the chasm within. It was such a detailed drawing that I could almost feel the heat of the disembodied mouth's breath on my face, right up to the time when I fell in ...

... and hit my head on the table. Apparently I had dozed off.

I looked at the paper where the mouths had been and saw just a few doodles of dogs and cats. One cat had a long tail that blended with a clean paragraph of cursive text. I recognized my own handwriting and realized that I had found my train of thought and finished the essay before dozing and dreaming about being eaten by the paper.

It wasn't that well-written, and had several references to an evil mouth chasing after the company as it opened its factory, but at least I had a start for when I transposed everything into my laptop. Maybe tonight I'll go to bed early and catch up on the sleep I've missed for the past week.

Day 23 of 100 - Summary: Caffeine leads to strange dreams during the day.