I have, over the course of eighteen years of schooling, acquired tremendous skill at bullshitting my way through essays. The last real essay I will ever have to write (not accounting for the possibility of grad-school) is due in an hour. I know that one should expect a product to reflect the effort one expects to put in it, but I had absolutely no intention of trying very hard on this one. Partly the burnout, partly the interest and timeframe, partly as a weak protest against the professor's grading method - I refuse to accept that my grade can be partly dependent on factors I have no control over, namely the effort of people I can't talk to.
The assignment: six to eight pages about Machiavelli's The Prince, with the emphasis on personal interpretation. As per my usual methods, I didn't even start perusing the book for a topic until noon yesterday. I approached the plan with the same paper-writing methods I had drilled into me in the fifth grade - introduce an argument, define two or three principles important to that argument, combine the principles into a coherent explanation, then summarize the whole thing in a copy of the introduction. Find and place sources/quotations after the fact, by idly hunting for lines that fit what you want to say. My essays tend to come out like souffles - large, elegant, full of air and grain, and ready to collapse if poked hard enough. I had every intention of this paper being five-and-a-half pages of pretentious crap.
I wrote an outline about 5PM, idly worked on an off on three pages while wresting myself away from Homestuck. I woke up at 9AM today and cranked out another four pages, plus editing and bullshit sourcing, finishing fifteen minutes ago. Quite a good effort if I do say so myself, and not a bad way to cap off my academic career. And I learned a lot about Machiavelli in the process, namely that the height of virtue is pretending to be moral and competent, while surreptitiously doing whatever lets you succeed. Thanks for telling me what I already know, broski.
Of course, I still have to write a brief essay in Spanish this afternoon and study for finals. But it's smooth sailing from here on out, after some downright stereotypically close shaves. Speaking of, I really need to shave. I look like I've been up all night solving a murder.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16304873 times)