Paper Mâché

You have probably all been there: A major paper is due in a difficult class in a few hours and you have yet to touch fingers to keyboard. The midnight deadline looms over your evening like a bad haircut, darkening your brow and generally making you feel stressed out.

The path to this common discomfort was an easy one. Whole libraries could be filled with accounts of all the things that didn’t happen on the way to the blank spot on your computer’s hardrive where your paper should be. You attended to the assignment the way Britney attends to Sean Preston and Jayden James.

You committed to one topic in front of your Professor but you will respect that promise about as much as the Obamination did his federal campaign funding pledge. Who could have known how little research there is on the Ramen noodle diet. It was a rotten topic anyway. You also told your Professor you would get him the paper early for comments, but that deadline passed with the Forth of July Fireworks.

All you want out of this is a decent grade; something that won’t disqualify you from your scholarship or embarrass your parents too badly when they see the grade. If they see the grade. What you don’t like is having to write a paper.

Most students would rather have someone jam a screwdriver through their knee than grind out an assignment. After graduation, the additional income earned because of the bachelor’s degree could be put toward knee replacement surgery.

Unfortunately for you, the sadist hotline is down and none of your friends are handy or willing with a screwdriver, leaving you with nothing but a QWERTY keyboard and your own noodle. Technology has failed you again.

The library greets you with a musky small that shouts “old books.” Actually it whispers. You look around the room at the masses of students, scrambling like ants who forgot to prepare for winter. They’re procrastinators, but you can’t really scold them since you will soon be joining in.

Your cell phone buzzes. It’s a friend from high school who wants to talk. You shouldn’t, but you do. What’s another hour when you’ve already dawdled three weeks?