Recently, I did what all students should avoid at all costs. I binge wrote an eight-page Shakespeare paper. During this trying time I documented the "stages" of my struggle, these are those stages.
Stage One: Excitement. You’ve opened up a new word document and have proudly displayed your name in the top right-hand corner. The font is set to Times New Roman and you’re all ready to double space it up. The empty page before you doesn’t bother you, it’s full of possibilities. You can do anything. Write anything. Be anything. You are a scholarly genius just waiting to show your professor your superb writing skills. Crack your knuckles and buckle down to kick this paper’s literary ass.
Stage Two: Doubt. You totally suck at writing. What are you even doing right now? You call that a thesis?! That’s a sentence full of fluff and stupidity and you know it. Your sources are complete crap. Do they even have anything to do with your topic? Did you seriously just cite a Wikipedia article? Are you trying to fail? Your professor is going to laugh at you. This is pitiful. You’re horrible. Just drop out of school right now.
Stage Three: Determination. Alright, you’ve got this. You can do this. Throw on some motivational music and write this thing! You are a strong, literary genius who don’t need no 4.0 to be a great and powerful human.
Stage Four: Procrastination. You’ve written a great introduction. It’s attention grabbing. It uses words with five syllables. You’ve got a few semi-colons in there that seem like they’re doing stuff. You’re golden. You’ve got so much time to spare. Just pop Netflix open on your laptop and kick back with some Taco Bell. You’ll totally be fine spending a few hours away from your paper. Take all the Buzzfeed quizzes you want. Stalk all the people you went to high school with on Facebook: Who’s pregnant? Who’s married? Who’s high off their ass 24/7? You've got nothing to worry about.
Stage Five: Panic. Why did you spend a whole day watching "Chopped"? You are going to fail! You’re not even done with page one! You only have a subpar introduction and a crappy thesis! There is not enough fluff in the world to make this paper worthy of even a 3.0. Your professor is going to fail you! There’s no way you’ll get an extension you’ve had a whole month to do this thing. It’s due in a day! What were you thinking?
Stage Six: Screw it. It’s whatever. It’s just worth 60 percent of your grade. You can always take easy electives to get it back up. Just write something and turn it in. Need to write two more pages and don’t have anything to talk about? Well, good thing you’ve got some sources because you’re about to quote everything. Don’t have a source to back up your point? Screw it. Just make it sound like you know what you’re talking about. It’ll be fine. It’s whatever.
Stage Seven: Relief. You did it. You’ve turned it in. You don’t have to worry about it anymore. Who cares if your professor hates it? Who cares if you hate it? It’s over and done with. Go home, make some Easy Mac, and watch some cartoons for a few hours until you remember that you’ve got a Stats essay due at midnight.
