The paper is done, hurrah. And I think it’s a bit of crap. Not that I didn’t do the research, the piles of printouts scattered about with notes scrawled in the margins and circles and arrows and exclamation points all over them prove otherwise. It’s decently written and all that, but there’s just no way you can *really* explore any subject particularly well with a 6 page limit. I really don’t like writing down to expectations.

During this paper, I discovered that apparently I’m a freak. It seems that writing papers in longhand isn’t as common as I would have thought. Guess I’m doing my part to keep PaperMate and Mead in business. All the online resources are great, but I still print everything out and take it, plus a notebook and pen and go somewhere else to actually read and write. Transcribe it into Word every now and again to keep track of how much I’ve actually written and don’t end up with a 20 page masterpiece when the absolute limit is 10 pages. Once I’ve gotten enough thoughts out of my head to satisfy the requirements and prove whatever point I want to prove, it all gets printed out, 1 paragraph to a page. Then I again retreat to somewhere else with pen in hand and the editing carnage begins. Strike, rewrite, add, rearrange. If I used a red pen it would looks like an axe murder had taken place. Add the changes to the paper, print it out again, and repeat. And repeat. I kill a lot of trees.

Best discovery during the course of the paper – the robin that lives in the porch swing has hatched her second set of babies! (And doesn’t care that the dog likes to sleep in the shade under the swing. Thank God it’s not a mockingbird, or the dog would be traumatized for life.)

But, we have to submit 2000 words by Friday at midnight for our class.

I know you don’t react well without a deadline, which is why I’ve not really poked at you up until now. We’ve got the sources and the vast bulk of the writing is already bouncing about, so it’s not like we’ve procrastinated THAT badly. (We also know how quickly we can get words to paper when needed.) It’s much easier to write when you at least have the words crashing about somewhere in your subconscious.

I couldn’t help but take notice of the fact that you did recognize the impending deadline and I appreciate the 450 words you allowed to come tumbling out this evening. However, in the future if you could hold off on a page and a half of insight until I am **out** of my car, it would be greatly appreciated. (And given the impending “no texting while driving law” showing up in a week, it’s not like I can Twitter myself my thoughts while at a red light.)

However, tomorrow we have to go balls to the wall. Or, temporal and frontal lobes to the wall. We still have to churn out another 1550 words or so. It’s not going to be God’s gift to research and analysis, but given the 2K word limit, it wasn’t going to be that in the first place.

Brain, I know you’re still seriously cranky over the fact that our super-awesome-spectacular initial outline was rejected because it would end up being “too long”, but I beseech you to get over it. Now it’s just about charming the pants of the professor with our arguments, despite the fact that we are the Rainbow Brite Leftist Liberal of the class. (Which is actually quite fun, but can be an impediment to an “A” in the class.)

Tomorrow, we’ll be outside in gorgeous weather with paper and pen and no distractions other than the birds. (And the dog when he gets pissy that I’m not playing with him. He’ll get over it.) But, we both know that this is when the best writing happens. And Brain, I’m not above taking the Hemingway route to finish this paper if required. However, I don’t have any Bloody Mary mix in the house, but I do have the Grey Goose, so we may be drinking martinis at 11AM. But, I do have olives, so they’ll at least be proper dirty martinis.

Brain, if you come through for me on this one, I promise you won’t have to think again until the beginning of August at the soonest.

Deal?

Total Editing Time: 358 minutes.

6 hours of actual writing time to knock out 3000 words.  Not too bad.  It’s still a bit of a piece of crap, but it’s done and hopefully the next paper I’ve got, I’ll figure out a better topic.

Mainly I’m doing BS filler at this point.  I’d feel bad about that, but it’s a long standing academic tradition.

Don’t think it would have mattered when I’d started the paper, I’d still be wrestling it to the ground at this point anyway cause it’s such a crap topic.

I’ve at least gotten a good chunk of it organized in my head – brief history of the two agencies, previous examples of joint efforts, previous examples of overlap or gaps, then justifications for combining the two, the end.

I am so glad this is the last big assignment.

I think I’d rather have the sleep.  And I’ve got plenty of time.

Well, I’m coming up on the deadline, and frankly, it’s just time to go completely into BS mode. It’s not like I have to actually believe what I’m writing or particularly care, just be choerent and have the sources that support it.

This particular class has been really hard to get into. It’s not that the base subject is boring (History of US Intel) but I think it’s just the reading materials for this particular class aren’t that great.

Now that I’ve finally gotten my brain into “just churn it out” mode, I can’t help but think I’ll have it knocked out with time to spare and probably well over the required length. Basically, I just have to stop caring too much about it, which has what has tripped me up so far.

Tomorrow’s quickie horoscope – sounds good to me: Your mind is extremely sharp today, and you are eager to discover some new ideas.

Not sure how keen I am on this particular class – the subject material is fine, but it’s compressed (8 weeks) and for whatever reason the prof doesn’t seem to be sticking with the standard “anything due on a particular week is due by Sunday” and has made Friday the deadline date so that’s got me a bit thrown off.

That, and I can’t decide WTF to write about.

Final exam next week then nothing else until August. (Works well since I don’t much want to be trying to do papers at the beach next month…)

Even better is when the paper overlaps nicely with another paper you’ve done, and you were smart enough to keep track of all those sources you looked up before as well.

4.5 pages down, 1.5 to go, 30 hours to finish. (Most of those hours I’ll need to get the citations formatted right.)