It’s 4 a.m. and your eyes hurt. Your hands look like fleshy spiders full of tiny bones. Hands are so weird. Are you typing? Yes, but you’re not writing. Wow, what a stressful situation to be in. Who put you in this situation? Who did this to you? Oh, yes. That’s right. It was you. You did this to you. You ran into an acquaintance on the way to the library and told her in a jolly mordant voice that you have to write a seven-page paper in one night, as if this was a fate the universe imposed on you. How dare you. How dare you.
Actually, this is fun. This will be a fun time. It will be like a sleepover with only yourself and you get to learn a lot about the German Democratic Republic. What did you learn at normal sleepovers? Only that Katie was a boner who went to bed early because she had swim practice in the morning. Would Katie have betrayed you to the Stasi? You’ll never know. You’re not in East Berlin. You’re lucky to be here in this nice warm library.
The girl nearby you is telling her friend how she felt so overwhelmed by how smart everyone at UVa is when she first got here, after being a star at her high school. Was she in one of your discussions? Why can’t you tell pretty white girls apart? You know that is not racism. You know what racism is thanks to all the vaguely socialist web magazines you’ve been reading in the name of “self-education.” Nice one, very nice, you want someone to give you a gold beret for reading an article and then spending hours doing God knows what? Do you remember anything you learned on your Wikipedia expeditions? You couldn’t have done the reading that your parents are paying for?
This introduction is three pages long. That’s fine. Don’t edit anything just keep slamming your stupid hands on this keyboard until you have enough loosely connected ideas to dump in front of your genius professor who spent her life studying this subject. She probably edits all the time.
Actually, this is fine. This is easy. You do this every semester. And you keep being fine. God is probably on your side. You don’t suffer consequences for your actions. You left your birth control at home and what happened? The pharmacist gave you more birth control because it turns out you have lost prescription insurance. Life is a big bowl of shaved ice lemonade for you.
Oh, man, what will you do when you have a kid? If you ruin your own life with your own stupid decisions it’s whatever but you could very well ruin the life of a future miniature person. Is there is a deadline for the sort of paperwork needed to protect its tiny form? If so your baby is going to have some hastily thrown together soft head insurance.
Enjoy writing “How so?” in the paper margins, Mr. Nice TA Who Wants His Students To Succeed, because this occasional discussion participant is making a whole mess of claims with no basis in the texts.
Actually, he’s going to love it. This is great. The other students aren’t writing about rituals and symbols and whatever else you liked writing about in your English classes. They’re writing about facts that the book told them. They’re sheep. Does this thesis statement make sense? No. It doesn’t matter. Mr. Nice TA is going to love it because you are a fun rebel who writes essays the day they are due. This is fun. It’s so wild that you’re full of veins. Your veins look like the veins in a leaf. You’re a big blood leaf. Oh yeah, everyone is going to be all over this.
You have two more papers due on Monday. See you Monday morning, kiddo.
Charlotte Raskovich is the Humor Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at c.raskovich@cavalierdaily.com.
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