Wednesday, January 26, 2011

My Paper - Stealing My Life with 700 Words to Show for It

For the class I'm taking, I have to write a paper on the Misegian Language Family. Writing a paper takes a lot of work. First you have to get your data. Sometimes that data is on the flip side of the Earth and sending large documents from a 3rd world country to the other side of the world is far from an easy feat. Sometimes people are hesitant to entrust their work to you and you have to set their mind at ease. Sometimes you can't get the data you need and just have to work without it. After all that, many hours have already been put into the paper.
Then you get to sit down and write. I have sat many hours in front of this screen writing this paper. Many hours. Let's say several. At least 7. Presently, at most 10. Just for fun (and because my brain refused to think anything useful for writing) I decided to take a break and remove all the extra stuff from my paper to see how much I had actually written. I removed the maps, the charts, the tables, the data examples, the headings, and all that other extra stuff and do you know what I came to? Less than 700 words. Less than 700 words! That's 100words/1hour! Right here I've already written more than 200 in 5 minutes! At that rate I should be able to write 800 in 15 mins and I wrote less than that in 7 HOURS!?!?!?! And yes, I understand that it's a little different to spill the thoughts in your head and to compare data and write intelligent statements in a professional manner but is the difference really so grand!?!!? Is it really 45 TIMES MORE WORK!??!? THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!!!
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Oh and the best part? This paper is to be 12-15 pages. With the extra stuff it's six. I'm half way done. ONLY HALF WAY DONE! MAYBE ANOTHER 10 HOURS OF WRITING 100WORDS/HOUR AND I'LL BE FINISHED! Lets just hope there's not A CURVE!!!!
(The curve I'm referring to is when you've written as much as you can think to but you still haven't met the length requirement so you just sit and stare at the screen hoping that you'll have an epiphany concerning what to write and when you do, you scrap together only a short paragraph and then return to staring at the screen. In addition to be emotionally and intellectually painful, it's also very bad for your eyes.)

P.S. Just because I'm logged into Facebook doesn't mean I'm actively on it. The 7 hours spent in front of my computer was not spent on Facebook. So there!

1 comment:

Melva W said...

I totally know that feeling! I'm hoping it gets easier. Last time I was at that stage in a paper, I met Amy K. at White Rhino and we had a paper writing race. Nothing like a little competition to keep you going. :)