Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Bad Girl Makes Good

Oh, why do we procrastinate? For a full YEAR I've known that I had to write this paper on Rousseau's influence on recent children's literature that is to be my contribution to an edited volume on romanticism and children's literature. I see on my list of last summer's goals that finishing this paper was chief among them. Then it was chief among my goals for last fall. Then it was chief among my goals for winter break.

Then it was my TOP goal for YESTERDAY, because the paper is due TODAY, and in less than an hour I'm leaving on the bus for the airport to fly to Newark, spending tonight with my sister and then attending a wonderful three-day poetry-writing retreat held at a convent in Mendham, New Jersey. I almost got it done last night, but was too tired to give it one last reading for one last revision. So I got up at 4:30 this morning, and now it's done, done, done, and emailed off. Hooray!

But I sort of wish I had done it six months ago. Or six weeks ago. Or six days ago. Oh, well. At least it was done six minutes ago! And, as we used to say during finals week when I was in college, "All's well that ends."

2 comments:

  1. On "Less Wrong", another blog I sometime read, there was an article that tries to answer the question "Why do we procrastinate?". I found it and the following comments to be interesting.

    Congratulations on overcoming the procrastination (deadlines are helpful for that) and finishing the paper! I hope you enjoy the poetry retreat.

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  2. Glad you got it done. Fly away to a fine time.

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