Everything is Wonderful!

So, after the drama of being threatened in Subway, a computer virus, a flat tyre, and having an egg thrown at me while I was trying to fix it, I had the little matter of an essay to finish between Friday evening and Monday morning - if finish is an appropriate word when I had less than 10% of it done.

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As Monday morning was dawning, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make the deadline as I had only about 1000 of the 4000 words required. I sat on my bed and contemplated my fate. I felt pretty stupid to have got myself into the situation and thought I'd probably taken on too much. The student handbook didn't give much comfort, it made it sound almost impossible to get extensions and descirbed strict penalties for late submissions. I considered just packing it all in and looking for a job instead. But after the experience of coming back from my failed venture in Poland with my tail between my legs, I wasn't keen to do that. More than that, I remembered that I'd already paid my tuition fees for the first year and I didn't want to let that go to waste.

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I decided that I'd go and grovel with my tutor and ask if I could extent the essay to 8000 words as the module has two parts and I'll need to write another essay for it this term. This seemed especially attractive as I'd covered a very small amount of material in my first 1000 words. So I went into the theology department and found my tutor. The first thing he said was 'thanks for the crossword' (I'd emailed my theological crossword to some of the staff as a sort of Christmas present) this seemed like a good sign, I could use it for bargaining. So I told him that I had no escuse because I hadn't got anything done over Christmas but I'd moved into a new place, and about the computer virus, and suggested that I could make it longer to combine the two halves of the module. He said he wouldn't recommend that but an extension would be a better option. I was amazed that he'd offer an extension and I wasn't about to refuse it. After the events of the previous few days, I'd lost my faith in human nature.

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So, anyway, I just about got it done for this Monday and handed it in. I'm not especially proud of it as an essay, even with the extension, it was rushed at the end. I think I wrote about 1800 words in 12 hours. And in the last 1000 the footnotes almost completely dried up as I was forced to rely on my own analysis in the hurry to get it done. But at least it's done.

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II feel quite ashamed of myself, I've never missed a deadline before, though I've been pretty close. Now I have three more essays to get done for the end of April. Better go now.