The Ugly Making of my Exegetical Paper

So I just finished my exegetical paper for my New Testament Exegesis class on Revelation 4-5. If you don't know what an exegetical is, it's a research paper. You look up everything you can look up on every verse you're writing on and try to give it some depth and color and background so you have a better idea of what the author was trying to say. Because we're kinda removed from the situation. So, like when John says, our Lord and God, we're all "Cool! He's talking about God!" but back then it was all "Yeah! God is God not Caesar!" And... yeah... there's more but I'm tired of thinking about this... soooo

Here's the situation. We were told at the beginning of class that all we had to do were daily assignments and then they would MAGICALLY become an exegetical paper at the end of class. This was... less than accurate. I mean, I should have known. I took a class in undergrad with the same .... misleading information. But I WILLED it to be true. And so I believed it. This was stupid.

Two weeks ago, our prof was all, "so the draft of your exegetical is due in a week."
".... say what?"

And then it hit.
One time when I was little, my parents took me to the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. I was playing in the shallow water when a wave broke over me, taking me out! I thrashed and flopped about in the water trying to right myself and another wave broke over me. Saltwater filled my mouth, nose, and eyes. Everything was burning, I couldn't breath, I didn't know up.Sand was scratching me in every direction. Finally, my dad reached me and lifted me up out of the water. From then on, my sister and I requested to go to Little Wave Beach, what we affectionately called the Chesapeake Bay which, to this day, has never tried to kill me.

This was like that. Without my dad.
This time there was a due date. And I would either get my footing. Or die.

The draft my prof requested was reduced to a one page excerpt. And the final is due Monday. Yeah. Tomorrow.
But I finished it.

I started off strong. I mean, I love writing exegetical papers, doing research, finding fascinating nuggets of pertinent information. And I sat down and loved it. But enjoying my work was taking too long and there is a due date!
I mean, there were TWENTY FIVE VERSES. So much research! "What does this noun mean?" "What is this verb doing?" "Why do these versions translate this differently?" "Oh there's textual criticism here!" EVERY VERSE!

It started to get very bad. Self talk began. And anyone who has resorted to self-talk knows how quickly that can get ugly....

"Elizabeth! You're doing so great!! Why don't you watch an episode of the Gilmore Girls as a reward?!"
"Ok. That was five episodes. Probably should get back to work..."
"Spinning in your chair is not work!"
"You've written one paragraph in the past hour!"
"Ok, so research takes time, but let's see if we can't make some progress instead. Skip this and come back."
"YOU CAN'T SKIP ALL THE VERSES!"
"Ok more Gilmore Girls, but you have to finish a verse during each commercial break."
"...that was more a paragraph than a finished verse...."
"You can have OREOS if you finish a verse! You LOVE oreos!"
"Good job YAY OREOS!"
"No. No more oreos! Just finish your paper!"
"STOP SPINNING!"
"Yay! You finished a sentence!"
And standards continued to be compromised.

But I finished! I didn't finish strong but I didn't finish late!
I did it!
I ran out of oreos at one point. I ran out of Gilmore Girl Episodes. I ran out of printer ink. BUT I DIDN'T RUN OUT OF TIME!

And in celebration:
MORE OREOS!!!!!

^That's my paper. I printed it to edit. Half of it is pale blue, the other very pale pink...