FEAR AND FOOTNOTES
AT 2 A.M.
People who pull all-nighters understand forced ambition. We are completely at ease with abject terror forcing us to start work at 10 p.m. and type without a break until the sun comes up.
Meanwhile, we pray that our printer doesn't break before the 9 a.m. deadline.
We don't shower before going to the midterm. We often sleep in the afternoon, after class of course. We seldom sweat office hours or actually read non-pre-highlighted textbooks.
As long as we know where to be for the three tests and where to drop the essays, everything will be just peachy. We know how to come through in a pinch; it is the only way we have ever done it. We love the quarter system. It tends to lack big, unwieldy projects that necessitate three days of actual work. You start getting into those semester-sized portfolios, and you may well lose procrastinators at the first turn. Quarters we can handle.
All procrastinators live by a code that goes something like this: Anything worth doing can always be done in one night. It doesn't matter if the final is on a six-unit class or if the term paper is to be footnoted and 12 pages. So long as we're just talking about a single item on the hit list, it'll get done.
We don't know how it happens on the night before. Everything just comes together. Every time.
And so there is a peace that comes 72 hours before the boldly highlighted events in our syllabi. It is an understanding of our capability that allows us to stare at a one-inch stack of green Classical Notes and say, "I've done this before. I know I did it 10 weeks ago. 'Southpark' is on. I'll be back upstairs by 10:31."
All procrastinators understand that they would bump up the G.P.A. about half a point if only they could make that feverish night happen one week earlier, but they also understand that perfect concentration and scary brute force do not come with day-to-day trips to the library. Fear is the key ingredient.
Really, it's a simple game of chicken. How long can you let the book be a doorstop and still end up on the right side of the bell curve?
I'm sure that many a professor shudders to think about a class of students just squeaking by on Cliffs Notes and Xeroxed notes, but you can't be fully interested in every class all the time, can you? It would certainly be great to be ruled by passion and obsession in all walks of academia, but you can read only so much Hawthorne and synthesize so many vicinal diols before ars gratia artis seems pretty empty and clichéd. "Just do it" is usually more apt: one of those meaningful, half-bright axioms that haunts any undergrad's balance of TV, the opposite sex and flashcards.
Besides, I firmly believe that the university's place is to enhance our procrastination skills. Anybody can do 24 hours of work in three days. But one day? Now we're talking about a marketable skill. Everything makes more sense if you learn it all at once anyway.
But there are problems. Like aging. I'm almost 21, but I've been pegged for 30 twice this month. The last time I looked my age was in 10th grade. I now have premature gray and constant bags. I don't mind; it means I've been working.
The recovery period for this type of self-abuse is rather long. True crammers do not crack a book between midterm eves. One usually likes to have a couple of weeks between showerless mornings. I chose this lifestyle long ago. My mom gave up trying to put me to bed after my sixth-grade project was due, and I was just finishing as daylight hit. My roommates have gotten used to my cracking gum at 4 a.m. I think they bought earplugs.
In the meantime, most nights are pretty free. I'll be watching TV or writing some columns for fun. Gimme a call 'round midnight.
-- Fred Houts '99 |
