Decaf had a post up about deadlines a few days ago. It all makes sense when you have four papers due in three days. Procrastination is put under a whole new light when you have two papers due at the exact same time and you're yet to start on either. Mina made an interesting little adventure out of her D.H.Lawrence paper. If i had a camera at my disposal, I'd probably do the same except mine would probably be a more philosophical experience.

Once you hit senior year as an S.S. major, it's never a matter of taking days to write a paper. Even a whole day is probably wasted on putting a research paper together. I've now gotten to the stage where the paper is no written really; it's compiled. None of it is copy-pasted. All of it comes from inside my head. I don't need to do research to know what my thesis will be and what I intend to say in the paper. All i really need now is to have a clear idea of what the content of the course has been. From there, I pick out a topic, construct a thesis in my head and find supporting evidence. Writing is the easy part.

Mathematically, I average about 500-700 words an hour. I know that's slow but considering that I'm researching and chatting at the same time (MSN is a constant distraction!) that's a decent hourly rate. Also, it means I can write a 3000-word paper in 5-odd hours. Not bad for a paper which earns me the class mean at worst. At best, I end up with the same marks as some of the best students in class who've spent innumerable hours researching, writing and editing their papers. African Lietrature last quarter was a primary example. I ended up 2 marks above the mean which says a whole lot when I wrote the paper in about 6 hours--research and all.

I still remember being 2 marks below the mean for the first 3 research papers I wrote at LUMS. All things considered though, no one at LUMS ever sat down to tell me how to write a paper. nobody ever gave me tips. No one ever even told me how to go about my research. Which is why reading some of the papers I grade shocks me into thinking that some of these people, who have been at university for 2-3 years, have no clue how to go about writing a paper.

Writing up this post, I just opened up old papers I've written. There's four papers, one for Intro to Lit, two for Plato and Aristotle and another for Phil of Mind, which I have written entirely off the top of my head. For the Intro to Lit paper, I read up some stories by Franz Kafka and presented an analysis of the themes, specifically of absurdity in Kafka's writing. For Phil of Mind, I've written an essay completely from my own knowledge of philoshophy and then looked for the sources after completing the paper just so the TA thinks I've done some research. One of the footnotes in the paper reads :

[1] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation VI. This is a general summary of what Descartes has discussed mostly in the Meditation VI. The part about the ‘thinking being’ has been picked up from the plethora of previous philosophy courses that I have taken. These particular arguments, as is the case with most arguments in this paper, have been picked up from inside my own head and, therefore, cannot be referenced in a bibliography or cited in text. Conversely, if it were possible for me to do so, I would give u the section number from my Mind/Brain where this information is stored. Meditation VI is from “Reasons at Work: Introductory Readings in Philosophy” by Steven M. Cahn et. el.

Both the papers for Plato and Aristotle, one on each philosopher, were written without any critical/theoretical supporting material as well. All four papers earned me at worst the mean mark.

It may sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet. I am! I'm very proud of the fact that I can write papers that well. =D

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Mubarik to Sana on becoming a khala. I'm sure Natalia is absolutely gorgeous! She can now marry Ramis and make up for my loss! ;)