Lately, blogging has become a chore. I used to have lots of free time during my days as "mom" to sit at the computer while the kids played. Blogging helps me to fill my day with some sense of accomplishment that does come with the usual dinner making or laundry folding. It is a chance to express myself, reflect on happenings, and document the life of my family to those that care to listen. Unfortunately, blogging requires brain-power that I'm having a hard time mustering these days.
As much as I like to say that I hate it, I really do enjoy writing. I often took pride in my many, MANY assigned essays...always scoring A's and B's. Most...*ahem*...ALL of my papers included thoughts from the evening before, or from the wee hours of the morning on the day it was due. It was rare for me to start a paper a week before it's due date...even if the paper was required to be 10-20 pages long. I remember one paper in particular. It was freshman year and I was in Lit of the New Testament with Mr. Tim Orton. He was a great guy...hard professor. Though an adjunct, he knew his stuff and had taught this particular class on several occasions...enough occasions that the required reading was a roughly binded "book" made of a stack of printer paper an inch thick and plastic rings written by a Mr. Tim Orton (go figure). Like all college classes, we were expected to read huge amounts in short amounts of time and had to know minute details by next class. And, in most classes, this requirement could usually be "fudged." In Orton's class, this was certainly not the case. Each class started off with a quiz 10 questions long. And each quiz counted towards a large percentage of one's final grade. Ugh...it was horrid, as these quizes were NOT easy. I was drowning weekly in a sea of C's, D's, and F's and I wasn't so sure my lifelong streak of being an A's and B's student was going to survive much longer.
The only hope of ever making it in Mr. Tim Orton's class was to do well on the essays (I think there were two, but I can't remember). Before assigning our first essay, he gave us a lecture on how hard of a grader he is. Great. The essay only needed to be something like 500-800 words (short), but the pressure was on. Of course, in typical Nicole fashion, I procrastinated. I didn't begin writing till the night before...which was usually the case anyway. I pulled out my refrences (fortunately, I DID get those in time) and began to think. The "thinking" phase of my writing usually ends up lasting till around midnight. By that time, I have written and rewritten my introduction and thesis about 6 times...as well as chatted on ICQ, had a hall dance party, and migrated to Nattie's room at least 3 times to see how far she's gotten (we were in the same class).
By 1AM, I'm on a roll. I've got the intro written and the rest always goes by much faster. By 2AM, I'm banished to the hall so that my roommate (who DOESN'T procrastinate) can catch some uninterrupted Z's. And, by 4AM I'm finished. I wasn't happy with the final paper and felt it needed much more tweaking for Mr. Tim Orton to be satisfied, but I was out of steam, out of ideas, and just plain exhausted. A few short hours later, we turned in our papers. Failiure was just one short week away....when we would recieve our scores.
It came time for us to get back to our papers, and I was literally sick to my stomach. Mr. Tim Orton started to go on and on about how he never gives out A's and that he was very impressed with a couple of papers that were turned in, one in particular. In my head I'm thinking..."great, I've surely failed, cause I'm certainly not the one out of 50 that got an A...my paper was horrible, and done with too little planning and thought...suppose I should try starting my papers the week before they are due...getting a C on my final report card will be devistating!!" He finished his shpeel and decided to give special recognition to the star writer by handing hers back first. My stomach flutters as I grab the paper that he hands me. 98%! (If I remember right, I think Nattie was the other A paper...am I right Nat?) For all he knew, I spent 2 weeks on that paper!
What was the point of me even writing this story?
1 comment:
how did I miss this entry? It was a good one. It shows that you enjoy writing, because you're good at it. I vaughly remember you telling me about you getting special recognition on a paper. However, in typical Nicole fashion, you always stressed about your grades and as far as you were concerned you were always flunking, so it was hard to truly appreciate the significance. I'm glad to hear 'the rest of the story'. :)
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