The Final Project

Because time is quickly slipping away and we are already over halfway through the semester, final papers and research projects and irritating group projects are on the horizon.  They were always on the syllabus, but now they are about to start impacting our lives in a very real way.

1. The proposal is due in like, mid-October and you scribble down a topic and question and email the prof without really considering how or when to actually write this thing.  The more vague the idea, the less likely they are to hate it and make you rewrite this part, right?

2. Bibliographies are due.  But first, we must interrogate the prof: Annotated or just a works cited list? How many sources? Do they all need to be from the library databases or are you flexible? And can the due date maybe be pushed back because we all were distracted by the election and forgot they were due at the end of the week?

3. The Meeting. Probably would be helpful later, but at this point you’re just making stuff up that is vaguely related to your topic, and you have no way to narrow your research yet because nothing stuck out.  So you end up frantically scribbling down all the things they said that could give your paper any sort of direction, nodding like you know what you are doing, and borrowing the prof’s best book related to your topic.  It’s not like they need it for their research or anything.

4. Now for the abstract.  What are we, science majors? It’s not that type of paper, this kind is more fun and involves a lot more reading.  How in the world can we boil down our as-yet-unwritten paper into a mere 100 words? We’re all just guessing at this point, honestly, the prof totally knows.

5. The rough draft is the greatest thing to ever happen.  It ensures we actually write the paper before the start of reading days, which is lifesaving by the time we get halfway through finals week.  An ungraded assignment that your prof can read and, depending on how awesome they are, give you notes on or discuss with you.  Having your friend read your partially drafted assignment filled with notes like ‘insert quote here’ or ‘fix this later’ maybe isn’t the same.

6. Sleeplessness is apparently not a thing for everyone, but we all despise the one person who turned in their paper a day early because we have at least a page and a half still to write.  And we all pity our roommates, who have to deal with us moving about at 3 am trying to stay awake and be coherent.  We gave up on eloquence around midnight.

7. Proofreading is amazing when you remember, but we fear that forgetting to look up the proper usage of this one word will make our professors think we are incompetent.

8. Anxiety about clicking send or walking to the prof’s office abounds when we know there is no going back.  Preferably followed by ice cream or a sugary coffee drink. At this moment, grades do not exist.

9. Relief.

10. Wait…we still have an exam after this? What the heck?!

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• finals
• Papers
• writing