Doing your papers the night before? Bunch a Pointdexters, I tell ya. In my day, I would do them the morning they were due.
I have two different memories of stupendeous feats of pulling a paper out of my ass. I thrive on clutch situations.
1)I had a Death and Dying Class. ( My favorite class in 12 years of Catholic school.) Every week we had to cover some aspect of death: execution, terminal illness, abortion, blah blah. Even got a field trip to a cemetary WHEEEE! We were suppose to keep journals and in the end pick one particular theme that we covered and write extensively on it, along with a poem. I hate poetry. It’s worthless drivel.And and article about death from the news and we had to write our funereal too. Pretty dark stuff.
The day before it’s due, a friend of mine who knows I was a consumate wool gatherer, asked how my paper was coming along. *You know, the 10 page report on death? * I was like, " Oh, it’s due tomorrow…typed…ten pages? Fine." I hand wrote out everything ( including filling in my journal that I was suppose to keep all semester long) did my stinkin’ poem, and everything else and typed it all up re-writing everything, that morning on a —brace yourselves kiddies born since the advent of the PC—on a manual typewriter that weighed more than my first car ( a 1942 Royale-the typewriter, not the car.). And using white out brought down your grade with every little white blob on the sheet. You punks today don’t know what suffering is…:::slap:::
Handed it in - with everyone watching me ( apparently this is the only thing I was known for in school–last minute things) and when the papers came back, I received a 120 percent. ( I got extra credit for something, though I cannot tell you what) The highest grade I’ve ever received. So I can honestly say, " I’m good at death."
The other was in English ( is anyone reading this? Don’t you have work to do? ) another compendeum of what we learned in english for the semester. Had to pick to things we studied and compare them to each other. No problem, except * I did not even own a text book * (this was the end of the semester what was the rush?) and I went out that afternoon at lunch in the cafe and stole the textbook off the the girl I hated the most in school ( slut) went home, randomly dropped my fingers into Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Kubla Khan ( by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who is a half-back for the Dolphins when he isn’t writing drug induced poetry) compared them, did odes to them and the like, did my rough draft the night before. Rewrote it during breakfast and finished writing it as the teacher was collecting it. ( to the amazement of my classmates and teacher.)
I got the highest score, which was the first time I’d ever blew the pants off the A students in my class. Heh. Naturally, those brianics got their retribution by becoming bank managers and CEO’s of upstart dot-com companies. Like that means anything…
(The first time I ever received an A in anything was history in 8th grade. When I got my paper back from the teacher, I did not recognize my name and the mark of A on the same page. It would be like seeing " Kathie Lee Gifford has talent". Unimaginable. I had to ask the kid next to me,
" who is this Shirley Ujest? Is she in this class? It’s me? "
I can only imagine if my record would have held up had I knuckled down and actually applied myself in college. But, being a slacker, baled on one of the greatest scams in this country, known as college.
Isn’t it time you got back to work?
