It's that time of year again! Paper time. When it's crunch time it can be hard to write that 4-page paper you've been meaning to write for more than a week. But there a few keys to success

1. Relish in vague prompts

While most people don't like vague prompts because they leave to much for you to decide, they are actually a godsend. Vague prompts allow you to write essays like the one borrowed from my boyfriend below (the prompt was "instructional paper").

2. If possible write about something you care about

It's going to make your life so much better if you are spending hours focusing on something you really like rather than something you hate.

3. Don't do it all at once!

Splitting up the time and doing a page at a time, or a paragraph at a time, or a section at a time, will make the job so much easier and much less head-banging-against-a-wall-inducing.

That being said, here is an instructional paper written by Adam Condrey. In 2015 he wrote this paper in one hour to meet an English deadline.

How To Play Frogger

So, you want to learn how to play Frogger? Well here’s a super long, but super understandable description of the process of going through it. Let’s start together then/

Let’s start with the basics. Frogger was a four leveled video game created in 1981 as an arcade video-game cabinet, made by Konami and licensed in North America by Sega-Gremlin. In Frogger, you play as a little, green frog that is trying to cross the road; you can name the frog whatever you like, for this written demonstration, let’s call him Steve. It is your job to help our friend Steve and his family cross the road and get to his lily pad, which is on the other side of a river, which is across said road. But it’s not that easy, first, you have to dodge cars, snakes, alligators, and even hop across logs. Oh, my! But is that all? Let’s find out together!

The first step in playing Frogger is to find Frogger. There are many online emulators that you can use to play the classic arcade cabinet game, along with many handheld versions, and even one on the Atari. But for this, let’s Travel back in time to the 80’s and play the original cabinet version. So you’ve found a Frogger Game. Now that you have, observe the screen and details of the cabinet. There is a bright flashing screen that says different three letter names with a number beside them, that’s each player and their score, but we’ll get to that later. Next is the console; the console is a very simple looking part of the cabinet, but it has one of the most important parts, the joystick. The joystick is a small, metal rod with a large, red ball on the end of it, you will use this device to control Steve and help him to his home. The joystick can move in four directions: left, right, up, and down. These directions are the ways in which you can move Steve. Next, insert a quarter into the slot under the console of the game cabinet; this is known as a “credit”. Each credit you have is a number of times you can play the game, for example: if you have three credits, you can play the game three times without having to insert more money.

Now that you’ve thrown away part of your allowance, The screen flashes to another setting and throws you into the game. We are finally greeted by our green friend Steve, at the bottom of the screen; here, you will also see the road we must cross on our daunting quest, along with the river, and the slots Steve and his family must get to on the other side of the river. At the very top of the screen is the score bar, the level number, and a number of lives you have, represented by a row of frogs. Each frog in the life meter counts as a chance or life you have in the game, if you die in the game, you will have to start over with one less chance to win. As you start, you can familiarize yourself with the controls, but don’t take too long, that long, green bar at the very bottom of the screen is your time, once the bar goes away completely, you’re out of time and you lose a life and you have two more chances to win.

After you have familiarized yourself with the controls, you can now play the game. As you start on the road, you will see that there are several of the aforementioned cars that you are supposed to help Steve dodge. If you get hit by a car, you lose a life, meaning you have one less chance to beat the game. After you help Steve bob and weave his way through the onslaught of cars, you reach a riverbank with several floating logs and turtles. The logs are an easy target, as they move slowly and are easy to jump on, which is what you’ll have to do to progress. After the logs, you can now move on to the turtles, the turtles are also an easy target to jump on but are also treacherous because they dive under the water for a few seconds, so you can’t jump onto them and if you’re on them when they dive, you die. When you have crossed the street, logs, and turtles, you will come to several spots on the adjacent side of the river, sometimes there will be a bug in a slot, you get extra points if you land on that bug, jump into the spots to complete that level for Steve. Then you can move onto the next member of Steve’s family and move them across the same level, you must fill up all of the slots to finish the level. Lastly, of the dangers and quite possibly the biggest plot hole in the game, the water. You must not, under any circumstance let Steve or any of his family to land in the water, or they will die. Which is why it’s a plot hole, because frogs swim all the time, but oh well, I don’t like to judge.

Presuming you made it past the first level, Steve has to move to his new home on side of another river, because there’s frog housing crisis or something; I don’t know, I’m not a frog scientist! Anyway, you must now help Steve and his family move to another river, This river is also on the other side of the road, but you and Steve are faced with new obstacles this time, like faster cars, faster-moving objects in the river, and alligators. The concept of level two is the same as level one, but you must move faster and think quicker to get past the faster cars, logs, and alligators. There are two types of alligators that appear in level two and the levels to come; the ones in the river and the ones in the frog holes on the side of the river. The river alligators are relatively harmless, as long as you don’t let Steve go near their mouths, Steve can use them to cross the river like a log or turtle. However, the alligators in the frog holes are dangerous; they hide in the frog holes and will eat you if Steve and his family jump into the holes with them and you will lose a life.

When you pass level two, you are then thrown into level three. Level three is also just like the other levels, but there are more cars, faster cars, more alligators, and a snake that patrols the south side of the river. After you navigate Steve through the cars you will meet the snake and he wants to have Steve and his family for dinner, not in a nice way. To avoid the Snake Steve must either jump onto a passing object, whether it be a turtle, alligator, or log, or Steve can jump into the road and go around the snake; but make sure Steve avoids the cars. After you get Steve to finagle his way around the obstacles, you can now help his family move into their new homes. But maybe this time will be their final time moving...

Oh? what’s that? Steve and co. have to move again? They probably want to be somewhere away from super fast alligators, snakes, and cars trying to kill them every time they go to the Frog Supermarket!

When Steve decides that this new neighborhood is too whack, he chooses a new one and decides to take you with him. In this level, everything is the same as it was in level three, but with a couple differences: everything is faster and there are snakes on the logs. Since there are snakes on the logs, Steve can spend less time on the logs than previously done, so you must speed up Steve to avoid your green friend from being eaten. Once you have gotten Steve to his new home, hopefully for the last time, you must get his family there as well. If you miraculously reach the end of level four, you’re off to, you guessed it, level five. But everything in level five is the same, up until level eight. Level eight is the final level and Steve is finally happy in his new home. Eighth time’s the charm, I guess. But after all of the levels of dodging traffic, crocodiles, and snakes, you are treated to a well-deserved sign saying “Well done” before the game tallies your score. The higher the score, the better, and then you can finally add your three letter word to the list of names on the title screen. So now you know how to play Frogger and what to expect, I’m glad we had this chat. Until next time you need to know how to do something, I might be here.