Will I Survive That Approaching Deadline....

It’s a heady feeling. That of being....very alive. A bit anxious. On edge. My toe is tapping, my fingertips dance aimlessly on top of the keyboard, without enough purpose to type anything. I gaze around the room, whether it be the solemn beauty of the Upper Cam, the soothing familiarity of the Mansfield library, or the crazy mess that is my own room.

The time in the bottom corner of the computer screen draws my eye, a bit too often. The deadline for the essay is approaching, perhaps twelve hours, eight hours, five, four, three, half, two minutes.

My eyes traverse the pages I’ve typed, on a hyper-aware, adrenaline-induced speed reading of my own words: do they make sense? is there a thesis somewhere in the mess of words? can I make the lines and lines of characters something cohesive, meaningful, with purpose, worthwhile?

As the deadline approaches, looming ever closer in its menacing finality, my doubts about the essay are magnified, intensified. What the hell have I written? Who would this possibly make sense to apart from me, the crazy writer of disconnected ramblings? Is my thesis too safe, does it work, will it develop into something better?

Have you ever literally read so much that when you put the book down for a break, your vision is a little fuzzy, your eyes watery, your body mad at you for being sedentary for too long? I mean, hey, I’m an English major: I should be used to it by now. But I really am doing much, much more reading and writing than I ever have before.

Some of the reading is enjoyable—particularly my Victorian lit. reading assignments. My history tutorial this term, however, demands caffeine daily: how can someone sit down to read a 500 page history book and actually remain engaged? It doesn’t matter that I take notes, indulge in small facebook breaks, listen to music, get up and stretch, tug on my left ear with my right hand to wake up my brain, chew on gum, tap my foot—the possibilities are endless with methods of attempting to stay awake; their lack of effectiveness is pretty uniform, however.

The study schedule here is so open-ended with short bursts of intensive stress. The days preceding the deadline are centered around going to the different libraries to read non-circulating books, avoiding my room with the very tempting bed (naps are ever so lovely), and trying to make enough progress through the readings to get a good handle on the material. Sometimes that happens after the first reading, the fourth, or not at all—even after reading a whole list of sources sometimes I feel completely unprepared to even approach a formidable essay prompt, let alone actually write the essay.

So what gets me through the essays? How do Oxford students do it? I can’t answer for them of course, but a few things help me actually finish my essays on-time: food/caffeine, friends, and non-academic events to look forward to, such as going to formal halls, getting tea, anticipating a bop, taking a weekend trip, skype dates, etc. “In two hours I’ll have turned this in and I’ll then get to go to...”

The essay will always, my friends and I say, get done. I trust myself to finish it, persevere, produce something even if it’s not my best work. And while sometimes it does feel a little bit like finals week for half of term, eight weeks truly is a concentrated term time that flies by with how busy everyone is.

Books don’t, perhaps, provide the enjoyment they once did for me. But I still love the smell of old books. Hearing “Jane Austen” mentioned by someone in passing is probably still pretty much guaranteed to make me smile. And I still lovingly skim the book bindings with my fingertips as I wander through the aisles searching for the latest that have been assigned. So while I am indeed writing this as a distraction from my twelfth and final essay of this term (due in about twelve hours), and am somewhat sickened at the pile of books resting next to me, I’m also excited to venture through some used bookstores this weekend to find some light, FUN reading to travel across Europe with me over break.