17 May 2009

I'm done!... oh, wait - NOW I'm done!

What a wild ride.
I had shown my strength and adept ability to procrastinate once again. The big integrative project that I had been postponing for weeks was finally unavoidable. The instruction packet was nearly 20 pages long. It was overwhelming. The homework was more than I could handle on a weekly basis, how was I supposed to do the project and the weekly homework? My only solution was to procrastinate until the last possible moment, take two days off work plus the weekend, and plow through it. I sequestered myself to the house and researched and typed away for four days. My plan was to print the final paper Monday afternoon at 4pm, and have it in the mail by 4:30pm, get home and indulge in Mike's lemonade. The deadline passed and I was only half way through the paper. I reset my deadline for 8pm. That time came and went and I was still typing away. I was so stressed and frantic I couldn't help the tears that started slipping out. After a quick freak out, I buckled down and finished the paper... at 11pm. I did a quick spell check, printed it off, and packaged it up.

I jumped into the car and raced off to the post-office. It is a good thing that I know the route, I was wearing my glasses as I hadn't bothered to take the 2 minutes away from writing to put in my contacts. Driving with my glasses is a scary proposition, doing anything in my glasses except walk from the bathroom to my bed is a scary idea. I walked into the Tualatin post office and walked up to the auto shipping kiosk only to see that it was out of order. Jumping back into the car I rushed towards the Lake Grove postal office. Thankfully their machine was up and running and the date on the stamp had Monday, May 11th - it still qualified as on-time. Driving back home it started to sprinkle, making the fact that I was behind the wheel even more of a liability. Thankfully I made it home, safe and sound, with a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

Sitting at my desk while at work the next day I checked my email and found an email from the class coordinator announcing the deadline was pushed back to Friday. I didn't have to kill myself yesterday! I could have gone to bed at a decent hour and finished it up later. Oh, well. I quickly sent an email to the grading coordinator and told him to toss the paper when he got it in the mail and that I would send another by the end of the week. Thankful for the extra time I polished the paper (an integrative study project of the lessons from the class and how they could apply to the Druze of Lebanon), did a better job of proof-reading, and sent it again. I am now, finally, done. Yippee!

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