Um, yeah, so as it turns out, 15 pages is like, nothing.

(I am not proud of what I'm about to relate. It's just the way it is.)

I went back to my flat yesterday, put myself on a writing schedule, and starting spouting out absolute nonsense. I took frequent breaks and ended up going to bed at midnight. I didn't get up at 5am to work again.

So I came to the lab and typed up what I had... amazingly, with no effort and really no content, I wrote over 12 pages of 1 1/2 spaced crap. If you expand that to the double spacing I'm used to typing in, that's over 16 pages. Easily one of the longest papers I've written, with absolutely the least effort ever on my part.

So since typing that up, I've just been sitting here, really. Decided to cut out the other sections I had planned last night and just throw together a bit of a lengthy conclusion. Fudged the spacing a little so that I'm now 2/3 of the way down the 13th page. It should end around the bottom of 14 or creep onto 15. That's it, really. I'll probably continue to sit here and spit out the last page an hour before it's due. Huh. That didn't end up taking a bit out of me.

It is, of course, quite possibly the worst paper I've ever written. Excepting possibly my final paper for DHS freshman year, but I was a freshman then, and I actually worked on that paper. So I think this one pretty much takes the title. It's full of sentences like:

EDIT: I had to erase this snippet of my paper because when they do their checks for plagiarism I don't want them to find my site and take my suggestion to grade me roughly too literally. I'll reinstate it when my paper's graded. I assure you, it's quite terrible and hilarious.

If anything, I am amused. Not disgusted. I find such writing highly amusing. I mean, I could pass it off as a bit of a parody piece, all the jargon I use without saying a thing. Truly. That is hilarious.

Also, I seem to have developed quite a thing for the word 'implicitly.'

So I have this crap paper I put absolutely no effort and very little time into. I sincerely hope for once my professor reads what I've actually written, realizes what a faker I am, and grades me accordingly. Because I have gotten away with this for far too long. I have a feeling, though, that none of our papers will be read thoroughly, as two days after they're due she's leaving for Italy. And the 5-pager I submitted to the same professor that was only slightly less crap earned me a grade that is off the charts on the conversion scale.

So possibly I've gotten away with it once again.

If there is any justice, perhaps it will have to be self-imposed. It is very clear to me that I am not, at least at the present moment, grad school material. I believe I am qualified, both on paper and according to my actual ability. But I have no drive whatsoever. I don't want it. If I go, I'll continue to act this way, and I believe (I have to believe; the alternative is too disheartening) such behavior would be immediately spotted and certainly not tolerated in that atmosphere, and I'd be kicked out on my ass (which is all I deserve) and I'd have wasted all the money (I don't really mind wasting time).

So no. No grad school for me, at least not directly. I don't think I will even apply. I may still do an honors thesis. But I think it's beyond obvious that I need to make a clean break from academia now.

So I'm just about done here — there's this conclusion yet, and a nothing 5-pager on pro-anorexia that I'll probably just copy straight out of this diary — which at this point is a relief, more than anything. I actually do believe that I will snap out of this immediately when I return to the places and the people I know. Then I'll be able to reflect on the whole experience more objectively. Then I'll be able to start putting things back together. Then I'll have one hell of a senior year... and everything after.

So yeah. About that conclusion.

I go to school, I write exams
If I pass, if I fail, if I drop out
does anyone give a damn?
And if they do, they'll soon forget
'cause it won't take much for me
to show them my life ain't over yet.
bnl