I think that I glorify papers too much. In my head, I love the idea of writing a long paper for one of my upper division classes with a cup of coffee. There’s kind of a sense of coziness or nostalgia. And honestly, it makes me feel like a grown up. It reminds me that I’m in college and pursuing what I love. Education is sexy. But this idolization of a 10-page, MLA-formatted paper on the concept of “other” in relation to Chaucer’s works is not as sexy as it seems in my head. Sitting down to do it is half of the work. College papers can be emotionally scarring, which can lead to the seven stages of writing a paper.
1. Shock
Your teacher assigns you a paper the same week that you have two midterms, a presentation and another paper. You literally have no time in your insanely busy schedule to write it. After your prof finishes explaining the requirements, the whole class stays silent when they ask, “Any questions?” because no one can speak.
2. Denial
You know that your paper is due on Monday, and tonight is the only night you have free this week, but you still don’t do it. You are either denying the fact that it exists or denying that it will be as hard as it seems. “Yeah, it doesn’t seem that bad.”
3. Bargaining
You’re down to the last few days before the paper is due. You still haven’t even started an outline. Your first response is to email your prof and tell them that your computer crashed and deleted everything. They email you back right away and say, “You used that excuse last week. Good luck.”
Next plan of action, bargain with your friends. Even if they’re not in your class, you ask them to write as much as they possibly know about the subject. What could go wrong with a math major helping an English major?
4. Guilt
You look over at your desk and see a sheet of paper with the guidelines on it. It’s actually more like a booklet. At first it makes you a little mad, don’t they know that you have other classes? But then you remember that funny joke they told the other class. Or the time that they stayed a little late on a Friday to help you because it was the only free time you had. You start remembering how much you actually like this professor and feel guilty for not doing the paper right away. You know that with the limited time you have left it’s not going to turn out that good. You finally decide to sit down and try to write this thing.
5. Anger
You’re sitting down, staring at the blank Microsoft Word document in front of you. The cursor blinks incessantly, mocking you. It starts dragging up feelings of anger. First you get angry at the paper, and then at yourself. Then, the anger spreads to everything, everyone. Your roommate asks if you want pancakes. You scream at her to go away, doesn’t she remember you prefer French toast?
6. Depression
After five minutes of frantically scanning Wikipedia, you can’t seem to find anything on your topic. What the heck? Does this even exist? You barely remember what the professor said at this point; they’ve moved past three more topics in the time that the paper was assigned. You feel sad and disappointed in yourself. You’re a better student than this (although not really since you’ve done the same thing the last five times). You feel really, really sad. School is hard. Harder than you thought. You miss your dog, family and friends. You start remembering every sad thing that has happened to you in the past couple of years. Everything sucks. Life sucks. Papers suck.
7. Acceptance
You’ve done it. Within a week or so, you’ve gone through the first six stages of grief. Of course two hours before the clock strikes midnight on Monday, acceptance finally reaches you. It’s a lot easier than you thought it would be. Once you get going, you can’t stop. You finish with five minutes until the deadline hits. You frantically go to turn it in, completing the copyright check with 30 seconds to spare. You exhale, take a chug of wine from the bottle you’ve been sipping all night, and go to sleep.
Although we’ve all gone through this process before, we all seem to forget it come the next paper we’ve been assigned. I doubt if there will ever be a time in my life when I’ll stop doing this with papers. I’ll just blame it on my idealization of writing.
