i am now officially done with 2 out of the 3 classes i am taking for credit. in order to reach this end, i spent all day “working” on the term paper for my Kant class (had to be around 15pp, due tomorrow). in reality, i didn’t even start thinking of a topic until after lunch. then i read the portion of the book which spoke to that topic (for the first time). then i took a nap. then i had a dinner meeting. by the time i put virtual pen to virtual paper, it was 7:45 pm. understand, at that point no planning or thought had been given to the argument.
it is now 3:15 am, 7.5 hours later, and i am done. the paper is 14 full pages. during my time writing the paper, i procrastinated a total of 4 times (procrastination was defined as leaving my desk for more than 10 minutes at a time), including one longish trip to the eating club for sustenance. during those 7.5 hours, i did 120 pull-ups on the shower bar in the bathroom (in multiples of 10) in order to stay awake.
i now have 7.5 hours until i have class and the paper is due. i am extremely grateful to god that i can now use this time to sleep! in fact, i’m amazed by god’s grace in allowing me to finish the paper so quickly–taking out breaks, i was writing at a pace of over 2 pages an hour (of philosophy! on kant of all things!) of course, before i get too excited, i have to realize that my paper sucks. it seriously isn’t very well thought-out, nor is it obvious what i’m trying to argue until close to the end (bad, bad). still, since the paper is on kant, i had no hope from the beginning that i could say anything coherent about any topic from the critique at all. thus my prayer this morning was that god would enable me to get something down, in a timely manner, that would help me pass the class. and that’s exactly what he did! now, of course, it is up to him what grade comes back. but i’m not worried.
now all that’s left is one more term paper due (only 12 pages this time), and one final on monday. that, and of course about a bazillion and twenty papers to grade and things to do for the class that i’m TAing.
