Paper Writing Hell

Reporting live from the depths of paper writing hell: it's raining here. It is 3:10 a.m. on my birthday, and I cannot sleep; thoughts of Ovidian tragic heroines and their possible relationship to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde are dancing through my head.

I did get my first birthday present at around 11:30 p.m. A thesis! An honest to god original, interesting, I-actually-want-to-write-about-it thesis. Unfortunately, I have to scrap 10 of the 12 pages of well-written but disconnected crap I spent all of Saturday and Sunday doing. BUT. It was all in a higher cause. My slow brain was apparently percolating all that time and I didn't know it.

I often think that by this time in my life, I should be the expert at paper writing. I'm in my second semester of graduate school, and an English teacher, for pete's sake. I should be able to pop these babies out like mentos freshmints. Instead, (in a phrase quoted from a fellow Bread Loafer sitting beside me in the computer room), I feel like I'm giving birth to a hippopotamus. One painful word at a time.

Yes, I can rationalize it and say that the papers are longer--12-20 pages, or more, depending--and require more research in graduate school and that the whole point is to challenge myself, as a scholar, to find something new to say. And it is difficult to get a new word in about guys that have been around for 500+ years. Still, there really shouldn't be four people here in the computer lab watching the sun rise together and filling the wastebasket with handfuls of yanked-out hair.

On the good news front: It's cool today! Almost chilly!

England has been wilting under the heat wave that is also apparently swee the U.S. (Mom - did you really say it hit 100 in Minnesota?) This is apparently the hottest summer England's had on record since 1656 or so. So pretty much since...ever. It's been a pretty special summer. Actually, other than the humidity, I haven't minded it, except that air conditioning isn't so common here. But I am now reveling in my sweaters and enjoying my tea.