Reaping what is sowed

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

I've finished my notecards (count: 70, 49 of those being 8" x 5", 21 being 6" x 4") and made my outline. I have about...16 hours to write 8-10 pages (although one will have to subtract the time for meals and an advising session and other mandatory business). Doable, but cutting it way too close. Why am I such an idiot?

On the other hand, the pressure is keeping me awake though underneath the adrenaline, I feel pretty groggy. I went to sleep at 2:30 last night and got up at 7:00 this morning, right before the alarm clock went off. I can't handle these kinds of hours anymore. ;_;

Let's not forget to mention that it's snowing outside (ugh!) and that I'm feeling a little sick in the stomach. >_<

I think right now would be a good time to start praying fervently to the minor demideity of academia. Or, if things get really serious, resort to this.

...Tari

Post-script: As desperate as I sound, I probably don't need to actually panic. For one, I've outlined to the point of figuring out transitions. The only problem is that once you start writing, things always start looking different. ::falls back into the Eeyore mood::

More muttering

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

What I've written over the past few hours, in between frantic paper-writing:

Poor Tacitus...I've abandoned him for the optimists. Maybe I'll put him in a footnote later?

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No! It's nearly noon, and I'm still figuring out what I wanted to say about these quotes...but the shape of this paper is starting to be clearer than ever. I'm starting to find it interesting again. I'm also kind of hungry...but I don't know what I could eat that wouldn't upset my stomach. (Stupid American food...where's rice porridge when you need it?)

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You know, now that I actually look at the page count, my outline is four and a half pages long, single-spaced. All I really need to do is, uh, "prosify" it and then it'll be the right length.

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My paper is like a deep lake on a calm, windless day. I plunge beneath the surface for as long as I can hold my breath, but I need to come up for air (or drown). And when I look back at the glassy surface of the lake, it's completely rippleless as if it's never been touched or disturbed.

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I remember a passage from The Last Samurai (again, Helen DeWitt, not the movie--geez, I hate making all these disclaimers now) where Ludo was recounting a story Sibylla had told him about a woman who tried to commit suicide before drowning herself and the world from beneath the water looked more lovely than it ever had before...just before she fell unconcious. She was pulled out in time to be revived, but she remembered that one moment of staring up at the ceiling from within the water. I wonder if that's true?

Certainly, the universe turns into a beautiful spiderweb of parallels and connections, when I'm "drowning" in this paper. What was once just symbol suddenly exists in its own right, heavy yet intricate, like some sort of elaborate silver jewelry winding around me like chains that have to be carefully disentangled.

One of the best ways to relax, at least for me, is to find a piece of thin embroidery floss that wound up in a complicated knot. Time does not pass until the last loop is teased out into a straight line, and you smooth out the silky, untwisted fibers between your fingers.

No wonder academics are insane.

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Just came back from the mandatory advising session, which was a really nice break from the darn paper. I enjoyed the walk. ^_^ It's really strange that 31 degree (Farenheit) weather feels so balmy and warm, but it's about twenty degrees higher than the average temperature of the weekend. I ran into one of the fellow Greenough Rome of Augustus students, who duly told me that he just handed in his paper. -_- I feel guilty now. I'd like to say that I'm on schedule, but I'm not. I'm pretty positive that I'll be able to finish the paper before midnight, but I feel so terrible about dragging it to the last minute like this. Got a burrito for my dinner, which is probably not so good for my stomach, but what can I say? It was tempting and it was food. Besides, I'm not going to go to Annenberg for dinner.

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Can't get back into the rhythm of working. This is bad. Very bad. >_<

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So I've been writing this paper in parts, for the most part, and now I've finally worked out all the kinks and I have to go through it from the beginning and make sure it all flows. Whew. That should take me about...three hours. Argh. And then there's the whole citation checking business. Uh-oh...I may finish right before midnight. ::sighs and buckles down once more::

I'm sorry, I usually babble to my mother while I'm writing a paper, and since I'm too stingy to waste my cell phone minutes and call her, I babbled via keyboard instead. And then I looked at my babblings and thought it would be a waste to just delete it all, so...

I'm so tired. I don't even know anymore if the paper's going to be good enough to be worth all this guilt.

::would like to be somewhere where she can actually scream out loud in frustration without feeling embarrassed::

...Tari

Post-script: Have uploaded new layout, though it is incomplete. Go look. Oh, and I think some people are still linking to http://www.angelette.com/tarigwaemir/ or http://tarigwaemir.tripod.com/ for my personal site. Neither of those exist right now, and I actually have no idea how to put up redirection pages because I don't have access to those accounts. Anyway, the URL (since about October) has been http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~hanalee/ in case you happen to be one of the mysterious people actually linking to my empty site. (The only reason I think that people might be linking to it is because the old URLs pop up on Google when I search my online name.)