May 9, 2015

Holy balls I finished my analytical research paper. The night before it is due, just like my good old undergraduate days. I guess it is comforting to know some things never change. I would greatly appreciate if my method of writing important papers would change, though. I'm not a fan of the stress it causes me to put paper writing off to the last minute. I also can't seem to write anything halfway decent unless I've put it off. There's got to be a better way. I just hope my paper doesn't suck those holy balls.

So, needless to say, I spent the entire day working on my paper. I woke up at 7:30AM and laid in bed until 8:00AM working through various ideas for my paper in my head. Then I got up and took a shower because I thought maybe I would feel more in the mood to work and be more productive if I was truly up and ready for the day. I also kind of wanted to put off writing my paper just a little bit longer, but I genuinely did think a shower in the morning would be better for my productivity than putting it off until later in the day. We'll pretend it worked.

I took short breaks throughout the day when it felt like I was going to lose my mind or that my monitors were burning my eyes out or my stomach told me I needed food, but other than that I remained pretty diligent. I would go into more detail about the whole process but it is 2:30AM and at this point it has all kind of blended together. I briefly thought about going to bed at a more respectable hour and saving the last bits until tomorrow but I knew if I did that I would drag it out the entire day instead of just a few hours. So I stayed up. I even did the bibliography and wrote the abstract, both of which I originally planned on doing tomorrow. The bibliography was actually fairly easy because I used Zotero to do most of the work. I had to added in maybe five or six references myself, and edit all of the Zotero ones, but it still made the process a lot faster.

In the end, my paper came out to exactly eight pages. Without the two pictures I included it is probably closer to exactly seven pages, so either way I nailed the suggested length. I also ended up using twelve sources, which was the upper limit for the recommended number. I kind of wish I only used ten, though, because the last two are on a separate page. Annoying.

I have read through bits of it as I was writing but tomorrow I will read through the whole thing and cross my fingers that it makes sense as a whole paper. I will also probably have my mom and sister read through it just to see if there is anything glaringly wrong that I have gone blind to after spending so much time staring at it. If I get full points for last weeks discussion, and not counting whatever points I may get for this week's discussion, I can afford to lose three points on my paper. So far the most points I have missed on something was 0.4, so hopefully that trend continues. I just have no idea what kind of paper grader she is. The fractions of points I have lost so far seem a bit nit-picky, and there are probably going to be a lot of things to nit-pick about in my paper, but hopefully not more than three points worth. And if so, hopefully the points I get for this week's discussion post can cancel it out. I really don't want to lose my 'A' on the last assignment. And I will be worried about it until the final grade is posted. No big deal, just more years off my life.