#honestly i give this credit for my degree the number of essays i wrote purely fueled by this on loop

[appleciders]

no soundtrack has been there for me like she has

[comicreliefmorlock]

Tell the Story... About the paper. And the not preparing. And the results.

So I actually started answering this ages ago, but tumblr hiccuped and I lost half of the whole story, so I threw a fit and put off finishing it until now.

^^

As before mentioned, college was a 50/50 split of “this is great!” and “fuckin’ kill me I don’t have time for this.”

And one of the things I learned getting an English degree is that there is no such thing as a cap on the “required reading.” I was taking anywhere from 2-3 English courses a semester–literature focused, mainly–for my degree requirements, and every single class had a required reading list of 10+ books, with short stories, essays, etc, etc, in between.

Now I am a bibliophile. I devour books. When I want to. Being told I had to read X number of books per semester, and retain enough information to take exams, write essays, etc…

Well, there were times that I simply Could Not Even Deal™.

One of those times came during the class “War & Culture: The Effects as Seen Through Literature.”

It was one of those middle of the day classes where you’re either exhausted because you were burning the midnight oil, twitchy because you’ve been in class all morning and you’ve tapped out your Available Amount of Care™ for the day OR you’re fucking starving and the professor gives you a look when you’re digging around in a bag of chips during her lecture.

While I’m not a morning person, I’m also not an early afternoon person. (Evening to oh, say… 4 AM are my peak hours.) And I was forced into being up and active at all hours during college. Classes around 11 AM to 2 PM were in my “nasty mood” zone.

…and the professor was honestly boring as fuck.

Granted, this was not a class of enthusiastic people. It was a class that other majors could pick up for an English credit, so you didn’t have actual English Majors in it to get real discussion happening. It was a whole lot of sitting around and watching the professor pull teeth to get someone to talk or just lecture in her incredibly droning voice.

We didn’t even touch on the real issues that could’ve been interesting. I mean literature is a reflection of a culture and time, and we could’ve had some smashing discussions. In any other professor’s class.

There were no smashing discussions.

And during a semester when my first ex was acclimating to college himself… I spent a lot of time simply Not Giving a Fuck™ through that class. Which threw me into a panic when I realized hey, this actually is a class and hey, you’ll be graded.

Cue our “Richard III” section. Now the War of the Roses is actually pretty fascinating purely from a ‘casual glance’ sort of view. Shoved into that class, it became dry and agonizing.

However, this was Shakespeare. I could do this. I was an Honours Thespian.

So I re-read the play. I watched the movie–we saw the 1955 version, not the 1995 version–and I took notes. I participated in class discussion. And when the paper was assigned?

I wrote it a week in advance. Edited it. Refined it. I had annotations and a glorious bibliography. This was a paper I was god damn proud of when I dropped it on the front table at the end of class.

…so of course I got a “C” on the paper.

You can imagine my reaction.

And so I simply tossed whatever lingering fucks I had to give right out the nearest window. This wasn’t my only English class, and the others were a hell of a lot more interesting. I’d strive for high marks in those classes and just give this one whatever attention was needed for a passing grade.

The next piece we were examining was “Gangs of New York.”

I didn’t read the book. Nor did I watch the movie. {Point in fact, it’s become my version of Wuffie’s “The Scarlet Letter.” I’ve avoided it for so long that it’s rather a point of pride that I haven’t seen it.} I didn’t even attend class on the day of discussion.

She handed out the essay assignments. I read three paragraphs of a film review online, wrote the essay the afternoon the fucking thing was due, tossed it on her desk and never looked back.

At least not until I got the graded essay and just stared, dumbfounded, at the big ole A at the top of the page.

…and at the notes talking about how insightful and thoughtful my essay was.

I don’t often lose my temper. I mean it happens, but I try to keep a solid grip on it. I was even more reluctant to let the anger fly back then; one did not become angry around my first ex. He’d overtop it and put you soundly in your place. (Or at least he did to me.) It took something quite extreme for me to just snap.

Oh yeah. I snapped.

I dented the back panel of my truck kicking it, set the paper on fire in the parking lot and threw my backpack so hard that it split a seam.

Fortunately, the parking lot was fairly deserted at this point in the day, so no one had to flee in terror of the psycho screecher.

Needless to say, I started watching my grades after that, and when I realized I was consistently getting higher grades on papers that I did the bare minimum preparation for…?

Welp.

I mastered “last-minute bullshit” so well that I was basically a copywriter even before @tlbodine​ trained me.