Writing Exercises and Procrastination

Well, today my first writing exercise of the year is due. Like last year this is just a short critical analysis that won't count toward my final grade. It is marked, but it's really so that your tutor can see where your writing skill level are and how best to help you get a better mark on the first essay (which is due in four weeks). What I don't think the course lecturers, tutors, and course coordinator realise is that if they make something worth absolutely nothing for your final grade then the chances are most students won't give a care to actually do their best. I am a guilty party in this as are most of my friends. I wrote my short critical analysis on the excerpt from Ben Jonson's "Volpone." I don't know if any of you have read or seen "Volpone" but it is one of the most boring comedies I have ever read...ok, I didn't read the last two acts, but my point remains. Why, then, did I write my analysis on "Volpone"?

The answer is very simple. I don't care about "Volpone" and seeing as this doesn't count towards my final grade I didn't want to waste one of the Shakespeare plays on it. Also, it was only suppose to be 550 words (no longer). Now, 550 words may seem like a lot, but its really not. If you think that your introduction and conclusion are suppose to be about 10% of your essay each then you realise that with 550 words each the introduction and the conclusion are really only suppose to be 55 words in length. Not enough to write a coherent introduction. Luckily, the instructions said to not write an intro or a conclusion and just get into the analysis. Still, 550 words with as vague a question you can get is hard because fancy sentences go out the window and you're forced to get straight to the point. But at the same time it's easy because you don't have to worry about being the most eloquent possible, you just have to state the facts.

Having said all this, this assignment was, for some reason, very hard for me to complete. It's not that I didn't understand what was going on in "Volpone" or that I was being lazy and just not doing it. I sat down Wednesday morning and only got 150 horrible words out by Wednesday evening. This is something that should only take me three hours (tops) to write. I think I spent an hour starring at the computer screen without writing a single word at a point.

After realising that no matter what I wrote it was still going to come out as a horrible paper, I started procrastinating. Yesterday we I got home from lectures I decided to mow the lawn (which is a funny story all by itself and deserves its own post) instead of finishing up my analysis. I even decided to do Spanish homework (which also deserves its own post) instead of writing. I put a mental block on the darn thing and it took all my focus and attention and Buffy the Vampire breaks during girls night last night to finish. But it is finished and I hope that it's alright.

All I can say is that I'm glad that Sims3 Pets didn't come out until today or I never would have finished it.