The 10-Page Paper

A couple of nights ago, my roommate had a 10-page paper to write.  She had spent hours and hours doing prep work for the paper -- making outlines, reading, pulling quotes, organizing her thoughts, etc.  Around 1:30 am, she announced that she was going to bed for a couple of hours and would get up early and finish.  I said good night and good luck and continued doing whatever it was I was doing (probably blogging), but what was going through my mind was, "Gosh.  I hope she finishes . . .  At this rate, she's gonna have to write 10 pages in 13 hours!  That's a close call.  A very close call."

It takes me at least an hour to write one page, and if it's the introduction?  Fuhgedabouddit.  That alone requires a couple of hours.  The body of the content is easier to write, but it still takes the bulk of the time.  The conclusion is by far the easiest, yet a lot of finesse is needed to pack a punch at the end.  (I really hate cheesy -- and therefore usually meaningless -- last sentences.)  All in all, I'd estimate that a 10-page paper takes me about 10 hours to write, and that's on the low end.  This doesn't even include the amount of time I spend on prep.  Why, just over a week ago, I had a 10-pager due, and it took me maybe 10-15 hours of prep and around a dozen to actually write the thing.  But here's the kicker:  I didn't even make it to 10 full pages.

As an English undergrad, I never, ever, ever (like everrrr) wrote on the high end of a range.  The required length for most pages was 8-10 pages, and I was always somewhere around 7 and a half.*  I'm just so dern laconic.  It's kind of a problem, actually.  I can't seem to shut up in person, yet on paper, I have an extremely difficult time putting words on a page.  These blog posts I write?  They're usually fairly short, but don't let that fool you -- they take hours to write.  Hours.  (Why I do this -- blog, that is -- is beyond the scope of this post.)

Imagine my surprise -- nay, shock -- when I heard Brooke's response to my question the following morning:

"What page are you on???"
"Seven."
"What time did you wake up?"
"4 o'clock."

I think my eyeballs nearly fell out.  She had written seven pages in five hours!  Apparently, Brooke's writing style is not laconic.  By 2:30 in the afternoon, she had written 12 pages and the bibliography.  This is how I feel about it:



*Don't worry; my papers were so good that the professors didn't care about the length.  ;)


Thing I'm thankful for: answered prayers