Avoiding Writing a Paper

Its amazing what I can do to avoid writing a paper. I sat down in front of the computer to work on my paper for my philosophy class around 8:30pm and it is now 1:30am. I have a grand total of 2.5 pages done for a 4-6 page paper. Not that I’m blaming SDMB because if it wasn’t for this I might be playing minesweeper or solitaire. Anything to avoid writing my paper. Altogether, I’ve spent about 40 minutes writing and over 2 hours reading and posting to threads.

wolverine: “Its amazing what I can do to avoid writing a paper.”

isn’t it though? i was supposed to sit down tonite and write one of the many papers i have due this coming week. have i written a word? no. but i HAVE cleaned all my dishes, the kitchen floor, organized a bookshelf, taken a very thorough shower, and divided two weeks of laundry into nice, even loads. from the looks of it, my desk is going to be what is cleaned next…

good luck with that paper : )

It is now 2:30AM and I only got another 1/2 page done. Oh well.

wolverine, i figured out what your problem is.

it’s only saturday night.

unless your paper is due on sunday morning, you are attempting this thing too early.

last minute panic is ALWAYS the best motivation. last minute panic and bone-crushing exhaustion. if your paper is due monday morning, wait until late sunday night (like 4 am) to get started. that way, you HAVE to do your paper before you go to sleep, and the only thing you will WANT to do is go to sleep; ergo, the paper will be done as quickly as possible.

if you dont care too much about grades, this is an excellent strategy.

I disagree. Having just pulled an all-nighter on Thursday for that very reason, I heartily advise starting your paper early. (Unless, of course, it is only a 5 page paper, in which case put it off :))

By the way: what’s the paper on?

It contains two parts. The first part is to explain Thomas Nagel’s position on absurdity while contrasting it with Camus’. Then either defend it or show where it goes wrong while defending our position from possible critiques.

Oh, the paper is due Monday but I have to write a Biochem paper on tomorrow, study for my Biochem Lab exam on Monday, and study for my final exam in Psychology on Tuesday. Plus, I have a philosophy quiz Monday and Quanatative Analysis quiz on Tuesday.

Clearly what you need is a good text generation program. Unfortunatly I only know of one that is a tad random, as the following, which took maybe 3 minutes to create, shows–

How come, no matter how long you spend proof reading a paper (and I spent a good two minutes on my last post) there are always a couple of glaring errors you see **immediatly **after it is too late.

I love those teachers (my Philosophy teacher is one of them) who says, “Now I know there will be some of you who wait until the last minute. Working on your paper at four in the morning then turning it in and it’ll be horrible.” My teacher doesn’t know me, then. I waited until the very last minute (the last minute for me is usally the night before after having, like, three weeks to work on it, or thirty minutes until I leave for school. Now, if I choose to hand-write it, I usually procrastinate until the class before the class where my paper is due) and turned it in and got a 96%, the highest in the class, I believe. For some reason, I always feel delicious smugness when I do this. I hand it in and the teacher gloats, having no idea that I just completed it, about fifteen minutes before handing it in.

From,

Anake

I would like to state for the record that Nen knows nothing about not writing papers. Really.

I skipped one of my best friend’s birthdays on Friday, had someone tell my manager I would quit if they didn’t let me go home yesterday, and am skipping my work christmas party tonight, for my Art History essay.

And so far I have all of… hmm… zero pages.

I am amazing.

Just thought I’d let people know I finished the paper.

10:30pm on Sunday. And no I have not been writing my paper the entire time. :rolleyes: I stopped at about 4am and started it back up about an hour ago. Taking a quick break before I write my Biochem one. I’ll let you know when I get that one done.

No, of course not. Leaving work early, say 4:30 PM just to get started is evidence of my motivation. The fact that I surfed the boards and got stuck in chat until 3:00 AM without typing a single word is mere coincidence.

[whine]“Hi, my name is Nen, and I have no willpower whatsoever…”[/whine]

:smiley:

Hey! Willpower is one thing. Knowing the difference between pleasure and pain is another.

Well, I finished my Biochem paper a half hour ago.

And for those not in the know…

::Chucks snowballs while trying to evade Tygr::

SMACK! Nen
SMACK! Rasa

::Snowball fights are fun::

Um… yeah. What he said…

D’oh! The “uh what he said” was directed at Nen. And willpower’s overrated anyway. Way overrated.

::grabs a handful of the sleety, slushy, grey, icy muck outside and tosses it Wolverine’s way::

DUCK! That goes for both of you.

A Biochem paper???