To you, whose due dates hang over my head like a children's mobile made of sharp objects:

I really enjoyed the classes you came from. Discussions were always interesting. Professors were always enthusiastic. You manifested yourself out of a whole semester of reading and learning. I read 23 books this semester in total, preparing to see you at the very end. Turns out that the syllabus was right all along and here you are — all three of you — sitting on my desk like delicate flowers signifying the beginning of spring. Your fonts are neat and clean, the paper unwrinkled, and the due date staring into the depths of my soul. All the other students in my classes may have one of you but I got lucky. A combination like the three of yours is like no other.

Your dates are in May, signifying that the end of another semester is near, and I am just around the corner from beach days, summer jobs, and family again.That also means a whole dorm room that I need to pack up and friends I have to say goodbye to until next time. But I can't spend my time thinking about all of that — because you are sitting on my desk, demanding hours of my time to be designated to flipping through pages of books to try to find an answer to my questions. You are stressing me out with your 5-to-10 page requirements and your open-ended questions. It's time for me to prepare my argumentative side for battle.

As pretty as your ink-covered pages may look, your flower-like resemblance will soon be covered in my chicken-scratch handwriting, pointing out the questions I need to answer and the problems I need to address. Once I start with a draft, it is all downhill from there. I'll have more questions every time I sit down to look at you and leave with even fewer answers than I had before. I'll stumble my way through word wars in an attempt to pinpoint the response that will be graded. I'll start to relate this to that and talk about how much this other thing matters when trying to respond to a question that was so open-answered that I could have written about the binding of the book as containing the real meaning of the work.

I'm sure I'll have a breakdown or two, where I throw you across the room or simply leave you lying there for Netflix. I'll struggle to figure out which of you to work on before the other, since you all seem to be due within a week's time. I wonder if professors get together and decide when to assign their classes papers. There's got to be a big plot to have everything due at once in some convoluted way of teaching students to manage their time because these kinds of things will definitely happen in the working world.

I know, I know, "you chose to major in a humanities field, and you chose to go to a liberal arts school." Yeah. I know. So essays should be what I want to do, and I should enjoy every minute of the process. Don't get me wrong — I definitely prefer writing essays to taking exams. But that does not mean that I enjoy it. Okay, you got m — -I do like writing essays sometimes. Usually, the times when I have finally finished the essay, handed it in, and don't have to look at it again. As much as I declare myself a writer, essays are frustrating and always will be.

So, you-who-hangs-over-my-head, thank you for being there to make me a stronger writer and a stronger student. But did you have to be here all at once?

Sincerely,

A frustrated English major