College Lesson Learned #36

#36- Papers aren’t a test of knowledge or what you’ve learned. It is a test of procrastination skills and bs-ing.

Professors assign papers like it’s their job… well it is. Since the creation of personal computers, professors across the nation have assigned papers more often than necessary due to the convenience and the flexibility of students having the ability to write papers wherever they want. Internet has also sped up the process because you can just attach your paper to a professor and then e-mail it right then and there.

Like I said, professors assign lots of papers all the time. However, there is one paper that one should fear above all else… the term paper! The term paper is the worst paper anyone has ever created.

My first semester of freshmen year I was in a history class called, “History of South Africa and Namibia” and it was a junior/senior level course. There was one other freshman in that class besides myself. I loved this class until it came time for the dreaded term paper- the 12 page term paper.

Like a good college student I spent very little time thinking about it until I absolutely had to. Like a better college student I didn’t come up with a topic until the last minute. And like every college student I waited until the eleventh hour to start my paper.

Two nights before the paper was due I stayed up until 4am working on finding sources and quotes (it was WAY too late to actually do real research). The next night I pulled my first all-nighter. Once I reached the 3:30 marker that’s when the “bs-ing” started. I just threw down baloney on the computer screen about the !Kung Bushmen in South Africa. I edited and finished at 7:30am, and was the first person to get breakfast.

I turned it in and when I got it back my professor had written to me:

“Phil I thought your paper was very well written, although I feel you as though you may have drawn out the last couple pages. You could’ve done with more information and less adjectives.

Moral: Get it done no matter the cost.