Last night, procrastination and poor decisions kicked my butt and I have had the most stressful morning of my life. It is entirely my fault that I haven't slept in over 24 hours, and I am going to make up for it by not waking up at all tomorrow. But first things first.
I had a paper due today. Or at least I think it was due today. It might be due Friday. Conflicting information, you see. At any rate, it's always better to go with what the teacher says, so it was due today. Now, this paper was just a revision of the paper I wrote in Week 4, which I may or may not have blogged about. I don't remember now, and I can't be bothered to go back and look. Since it was just a revision, I kept putting it off because really, how long can it take to beat a few citations into submission? My tutor said my paper was actually halfway decent the first time around!
Of course, things are rarely that easy. Yes, my tutor said my paper was actually halfway decent. He also said I was playing it too safe and I needed to expand my thesis. My faithful readers might be able to hazard a guess at where this is going. I ended up doing massive cuts and reworkings to the paper, going above and beyond what even I anticipated. I made painstaking corrections, only to take out the entire paragraph an hour later. Though I did get to read one of Francis Bacon's essays aloud to myself, and it was the best thing ever. Seriously, that man could write. I guess one of the upsides of having your own room is you can read Stuart period literature out loud and nobody will be terribly bothered by it.
I finished the essay around maybe 3:30am. Now, those of you who know me are well aware that I am frequently still conscious at 3:30am. It is not an hour unknown to me. I decided it would be a good plan to go to the computer lab -- which is quite close to my room -- to print off my essay right then, so I wouldn't have to fight printer lines in the morning. Monday mornings in the computer lab can be a bit hectic, because everyone has something due. I figured it would be especially bad on the Monday of Week 10. Besides, the English department mailboxes, where I was supposed to turn in my paper, weren't locked away in some random room like the ones at UCSB. I planned to print my essay and turn it in at 4am and then have some blissful, undisturbed, worry-free sleep. So there I was, at 3:30am, in the computer lab with a handful of other students. They were all surrounded by blankets and large stacks of books and more snack foods and sodas and coffees than I could shake a stick at. Obviously I wasn't the only person up in the wee hours of the morning finishing an assignment or studying for exams. Of course, nobody seems to actually have exams this week -- Spring Term exams are in the first week of Summer Term, for some ungodly reason -- but they were there, and we were a very tired little bunch.
Naturally, I picked the slowest computer in the entire lab to log into, and it nearly crashed upon turning on. Wonderful. When I finally get the stupid thing to bend to my will, I log into the printer to receive my documents. I print them. I am thinking about how I'm going to turn in my stupid essay and curl up in bed and sleep until 2pm.
Then I realise nothing is happening with the printer. In fact, there is an error message about some paper jam that I failed to notice earlier. I was very, very angry. The computer lab was obviously conspiring against me. I aborted my printing jobs and went back to my room, very displeased with the entire thing. I planned to wake up early the next morning, go to breakfast (something that rarely happens), and print my paper on the way back.
Of course, my displeasure at my previous plans' failure prevented me from falling asleep at all. I was still wide awake when 9am rolled around. I seriously saw hours this morning that I am very, very unaccustomed to seeing. I can't even recall the last time I was up at 7am, unless it was for my flight here. So I crawled out of bed, threw on some clothes, and went to get breakfast. Breakfast was wonderful. I wish the dining halls stayed open later so I'd have more incentive to go. I really hate waking up prior to 10am for anything. Except travel.
But when I went back to the computer lab, the printer still hadn't been fixed. Perhaps it was expecting a bit much of the IT guys to have gotten there in an hour, but I was tired and fed up with the entire business. First my paper refuses to be easily revised, and now I couldn't even print it. The Gods of Scholarship were obviously against me turning this paper in. They were probably conspiring with my old nemeses, the Technology Gods.
Yes, it wasn't due until 3pm. But I wanted to get that thing in as early as possible so I wouldn't have to think about Sir Philip Sidney anymore. That man. I hate him so much. Stupid "Defence of Poesy." If I never have to read that again, it will be too soon. Besides, my new plan was to print the cursed thing out, and then go to sleep until tea. It was a good plan, even if it would completely obliterate my already-horrifying sleeping habits.
Anyway. I went back to my room and decided, "Oh, it's not that urgent. I have hours before the paper is due. I can wait until, say, noon and see if they've fixed the printers then." But as we have established, I am not a patient person. For whatever reason, my natural procrastinator tendencies were not kicking in. It would be nice if they would "not kick in" when I had a big project due, but I'll take the "not kicking in" when I can get it.
So I looked up where the other print labs were on campus. There was another computer room in the neighbouring college (note: colleges are subdivisions of the University), and it wasn't key card locked to residents of that college. Perfect.
Unfortunately, I was completely incapable of finding that damn place. It wasn't labelled anywhere, and there weren't many people around at 9:30am that I could ask, at least not in that part of the University.
It was off to the library.
This was my first time at the currently-under-construction library at UoY, and I had no idea what was going on. I followed some people to the computer lab -- one of several there, apparently -- and finally managed to get my paper sent to the printer.
Of course, UoY printers are the slowest printers in the world. And of course the woman in front of me in line was printing twenty freaking documents. WHY WOULD YOU NEED TO PRINT TWENTY DOCUMENTS. COULDN'T YOU HAVE CONSOLIDATED THEM INTO ONE DOCUMENT? IT WOULD HAVE MADE THE PROCESS AT LEAST TWICE AS FAST.
It was a good long wait until I finally got my chance at the printer. Five minutes later I had the thing printed, stapled, and in my tutor's box. Finally, finally that cursed paper was finished. It only took me running all over campus and staying up all night to get it done. By this point, I was too wired to get any sleep -- fresh air will do wonders, especially when it's roughly 40F outside -- and it was mid-morning anyway.
I pretty much lazed in bed all day. I don't have any more classes until the end of term, except for a (mostly redundant) tutorial on Wednesday and a seminar on Thursday that I actually completely forgot about until just now. I guess I ought to get cracking on reading Shakespeare's "Henry IV Pt. 1" and "A Winter's Tale," eh?
An English major's work is never done.
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