Sweet Jesus, I hate writing papers.

[Ladyhawk]

During my life, I've had my fill of writing papers. I have a BA in Liberal Studies, which required tons of essays and a multiple subjects teaching credential (which required still more essays). I hate 'em. Especially the kind where you just regurgitate back information about a subject. It doesn't engage the brain much. Of course, "A" quality essays in college require that you go a step further and develop your own ideas. The paper I'm working on currently? Nope. I just have to hammer out a biography of Robert Schumann's life without plagiarizing. Boring. As. Hell.

Many of the major events of my life revolve around writing papers. When the big quake hit the Bay Area during the World Series, I was sitting in the library, typing a term paper on an old Apple IIe. Even in Fresno, I felt the ground slide back and forth beneath me. I thought I might be having a dizzy spell.

Another student named John was in the same little alcove. He looked up and said, "Did you feel that?"

"Yeah, I did...earthquake?" I asked.

"Musta been," said John.

I continued typing away at that damn term paper, squinting to see green words spread across the black screen. All my papers were printed on old dot matrix printer in the computer lab. I used to give those long, perforated strips from the edges to my parrot and he'd happily play "birdie decorator."

That parrot is older than the Internets. Both of 'em.

I didn't learn until much later that overpasses had collapsed. I was isolated in my tiny little world of term papers.

Here it is many years later and I'm still sick of the damn things and hate being immersed in them.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Pity me, okay?

[SmileyBoy]

1. Amen, sister.

Luckily for me, I probably only have a couple courses left in college where I have to write papers. As an architecture student, it'll mostly be building models and drawing for me.

[Droopy]

2. I hated writing papers so much

that I quit college my junior year. Actually it was more than just hating them. I was finding that I could not write them at all toward the end.

[Ava]

3. take a few pain pills and you'll love it.

and you will think your a genius! :rofl:

[Ladyhawk]

4. LOL...what kind of pain pills do you recommend?

Seriously...anything to get me through this!!!!! I bet if you took all the papers I've written in my lifetime and put them in a book, the thickness would rival an unabridged dictionary.

I liked my acting class, but had a similar "dislike" of memorizing my lines. As a kid I was forced to do more memorization than the average student. I had to memorize huge sections of the Bible. My high school social studies and Bible teacher--besides being a complete fundy moonbat--was fond of lists. We'd have to memorize HUGE lists. As I recall, one was the 22 steps to a bill becoming law; another was the "six aspects of forgiveness," the 14 "whatever the hell he wants to torture us with this week." It was mind-numbingly boring and completely unstimulating. We just regurgitated back the "right" answers. Very fundy. Ack.

I should dig through old high school notes and see if I can show you just how poisoned we all were.

[Ava]

6. i posted about this earlier

i was on pain meds when i sprained my ankle and fractured my foot. i decided to get up in the middle of the night and write what i thought was an awesome story. it was some seriously crazy story about a "spider in an empty box that stole all my money."

yeah. crazy. i know.

i still have that story around here somewhere.

[petronius]

5. If you'd enjoy a little schadefreude...

...remember that your professor has to carefully read all 10, 20, 30 or how ever many papers there are in your class - that sucks almost as bad as writing them. (If you want a little revenge - stick in a few extra pages for him/her to read!)

[Ladyhawk]

7. Actually, I don't think she reads 'em.

I think she just marks off that we did them. Really.

Back when I was in a "real" college, those 13-page term papers that SmileyBoy hates so much would have been scrutinized with a magnifying glass. Tough stuff. I was so disconnected from a social life that I made it through college with a 4.0 GPA. I was valedictorian. But after that much applied study, I didn't want to read anything but trash novels. I didn't want to memorize anything. I didn't want to write anything. I didn't even want to think.

Besides the crash courses in every imaginable subject, my world also got turned upside down. Even this "Christian" college was rather liberal. Cracks in my belief system became fissures. I had a hell of a lot of thinking to do that was not related to any school subject. I had to apply my newfound reasoning abilities to the big metaphysical issues: Where did we come from? Is there really a god? Was I lied to for my entire life? What happens when we die?

Growing up as a fundy, I had the answers to these questions before I even asked them. It turned out they were the wrong answers and my entire world view came tumbling down.

On the other side, I'm finding I'm less tolerant of such stupidity as regurgitating back information and memorization. Bleh. :) I did more than my fair share of this crap already and rebuilt my world view besides.

I think I should get a pass. Don't you?

[petronius]

8. It sounds as though you made very good use of your early college years

I'd like to have a do-over on mine, now that I realize how much more I could have done.

Yes, I think you should get a pass on the regurgitation - your posts here present a compelling case... However, I doubt if your teacher sees it that way. :(

It sounds as though we were undergrads at the same time - I felt Loma Prieta as a freshman. It actually got me out of a chemistry exam I was ill-prepared for...at least for a few days.

[Ladyhawk]

9. What year was the Loma Prieta quake?

I can't remember. The huge fire that drove my mother out of her home was in '87. She grabbed my parrot--she was taking care of him--and left. The smoke was awful. When I came home the first time after the fire, I was so depressed at the view looking toward Tuolumne. Every mountain as far as the eye could see was scorched. The fire tower on Duckwall Mountain burned up (ironic) and to this day most of the mountain lacks good-sized trees. The view is better now because green has filled in the burned spots, but it will take a long time for the trees to recover.

[petronius]

10. 1989 was the World Series quake

I was a freshman at the time.

It's really amazing how long those fire scars last - the landscape is pretty as the meadows start to fill in, but it's not the same if you remember the original forest. I hike through the scar from the Rainbow fire a while back - it was 15 or so years after the fire but I was blown away by how visible it still was... (I know it's wrong, but I get a good laugh when a fire tower burns down!)