The delights of the final push towards the end of your final year as an undergrad. are the essays. I have to turn out two essays and one dissertation, in this term. The essays are due in at the end of term, the dissertation just after the Easter break. So, a total of 14k words. Easy peasy…
Totally atypically of me I am just now ahead of the curve with a lot of this stuff. I have the raw materials for one essay, if I really pulled my digit from my orifice I could have a reasonably credible draft written by the end of the weekend. It is currently my plan to attempt that. Although, as the main reason that I’m ahead on the essaying is because I am behind and entering panic mode on the dissertationing I’m not sure this is entirely a good thing. But, I am in Polyanna mode so I’ll take it as good.
One problem that I have is that I find it FAR easier to work in one particular library, it’s a small place, not usually very full, quiet, has nice desk space with places to plug your laptop in easily, is quiet, and all of the books that you need are Right There. You can just wander over and get them. It isn’t a lending library so most books are there most of the time (unless of course one of your classmates is preparing for the same seminar and has snaffled all of the ones you need first, but then you can go and beat said classmate around the ears with a placemarker – one of the large bits of cardboard you have to sign and put in the gap where you took a book from. See, the downside of the system, random violence if your name gets recognised. But I digress…)
Did I mention this place is quiet and civilised? I think I may have done. I love it there. And I get a heck of a lot of work done in a few hours there. I could head back tomorrow or I could try the unthinkable and attempt to write at home. I am much less good at working at home. I mean, there’s a cat that needs stroking, and there’s a kettle right there for making coffee. And … well, it’s home, it’s where I like to be, and it’s full of distractions.
The library is a bit of a hike to get to, but when I do get there my productivity soars. I may try writing at home tomorrow and if that doesn’t work take to slogging back in to town with my laptop on my back. Like some kind of technologically enabled snail, carrying my world on my shoulders. Or was that Atlas? No, he carried the heavens. Did anyone carry the world? I really should be better at these classical references by now.
