The end is near!
And no, this is not an apocalyptic warning. It's a ramble concerning school, so you are hereby warned. It means that my final essay of the year is in its last stages. And that means that I am compulsively reading it over and changing the order of things, reading it again, and then changing it back. This essay worries me, because I'm relying much more on my own ideas than I have before. 3000 words (or thereabouts), only 18 footnotes (to put that into perspective, my last history paper was the same length and it had 51 footnotes!). If the English department still tells me I'm relying too much on secondary sources, I will probably explode.
I can't decide if this essay is really good or really terrible. It's terribly pretentious, though, that's for sure. I've sunk to a new low, using words like corroborate, appropriate (as a verb), intertext, and auctor. It's gratifying to know that I am able to write this much using mostly my own analysis of the poems, but I'm paranoid that I won't have supported my arguments well enough or that there are huge holes in my argument that I would have noticed if I'd done more secondary reading. Among other things. Ahhhh. I hope I'm just worrying over nothing...but still, 50% of my mark rests on this essay that could be complete nonsense... a little frightening. And really, I actually like this paper. I enjoyed writing it (although I still dislike Piers Plowman), and I think I actually came up with some good points. So if it turns out to be junk, I'll be upset.
Okay, as I'm writing this I'm coming up with even more ridiculous last-minute panics. This is what happens when I have an essay to do but no class to distract me. Am I really making connections across the module? Are my tenses okay? (Spent ages trying to stop myself from switching to past tense, but sometimes things need to be in past tense...) Is my citation style okay? Why is Krishna blue? Is there a point to these questions? Why am I subjecting people to this?
I am pathetic. It will soon be over. Breathe.
I can't decide if this essay is really good or really terrible. It's terribly pretentious, though, that's for sure. I've sunk to a new low, using words like corroborate, appropriate (as a verb), intertext, and auctor. It's gratifying to know that I am able to write this much using mostly my own analysis of the poems, but I'm paranoid that I won't have supported my arguments well enough or that there are huge holes in my argument that I would have noticed if I'd done more secondary reading. Among other things. Ahhhh. I hope I'm just worrying over nothing...but still, 50% of my mark rests on this essay that could be complete nonsense... a little frightening. And really, I actually like this paper. I enjoyed writing it (although I still dislike Piers Plowman), and I think I actually came up with some good points. So if it turns out to be junk, I'll be upset.
Okay, as I'm writing this I'm coming up with even more ridiculous last-minute panics. This is what happens when I have an essay to do but no class to distract me. Am I really making connections across the module? Are my tenses okay? (Spent ages trying to stop myself from switching to past tense, but sometimes things need to be in past tense...) Is my citation style okay? Why is Krishna blue? Is there a point to these questions? Why am I subjecting people to this?
I am pathetic. It will soon be over. Breathe.