One of the most important skills to have in college is essay writing. No matter what your major is, you will probably have to write an essay at some point for one of your core or gen ed classes. Some students live to write essays and there are others who would rather have worksheets of math problems to do or a project to work on. However, there is one thing that every essay writer is guilty of at least once in his or her career: the last minute essay.
6:00 P.M.
You sit down to write your five page essay that's due at 10 A.M. tomorrow. You're feeling confident. Who needs an outline? Not you!
6:30 P.M.
After agonizing over an opening paragraph, you finally give in to your stomach and get dinner. You order from Grubhub and decide that you can't get any work done while you're waiting for your food so you catch up on your Netflix. Go ahead, watch a few episodes and have some food. That opening paragraph is pretty killer and you need a break.
8:30 P.M.
You realize you haven't checked your phone in a while. As it turns out, your phone is blowing up. It would be rude not to respond to all of these notifications, so you decide to get them all out of the way. You also tweet about how #bored you are and you Instagram a picture of your writing space with the caption "And hours to go before I sleep." How else are people supposed to know how busy you are?
9:30 P.M.
Finally it's time to start on those body paragraphs. You sit down with your computer to write and you realize that maybe you did need that outline, after all.
9:45 P.M.
After writing and rewriting the same sentence for a good amount of time, you start to look for inspiration in other places. Maybe you should've read the book that you're writing the essay on a little more closely ...
11:00 P.M.
Your crude notes on the Shmoop page you just read have you feeling more confident about your paper. You start typing out ideas and sentence by sentence, your paper starts to take form.
1:30 A.M.
You're halfway there! You can feel yourself waning, though, so you drink a cold bottle of water, a Red Bull and you make yourself a cup of coffee.
1:36 A.M.
You stumble to the bathroom due to all the liquid you just consumed.
3:30 A.M.
You're so close to being done! Your caffeine-induced surge of energy helped get your ideas flowing and you can see the finish line. As you put the finishing touches on your conclusion paragraph, you realize that you're essay is only four and a half pages. You get creative and embellish a few sentences in order to make the bare minimum.
4:00 A.M.
After triple checking your MLA formatting and fixing your header, you're ready to print and pass out. But you can't print. You know why? The printer knows you're tired. The printer knows that you put this paper off until the night before it was due. The printer just wants to make life a little harder for you. So no, you can't print. Not until you turn your computer and your printer off and on again and reinstall all the drivers, that is.
10:00 A.M.
After a minimal amount of sleep, you stumble out of bed and traipse to your class. You might still be in your pajamas, but hey, there's no shame in that. Show your classmates that you're a writing warrior. They'll take one look at you and know that you live on the edge. After you turn in your paper at the beginning of class, you'll put your head down and take a small nap. Go ahead, you deserve it.
