10 Pages In 24 Hours

[Belaam]

My degrees are in English, so 10 pages isn't really all that many. The one that kicked my ass was a "Teaching Adolescent Literature" class where we met twice a week and discussed teaching two books a session. Meaning for that just that one class, I was reading four YA novels and chucks of a teaching methods textbook every week. That was a busy semester.

But generally, I tend to write a first draft that is far longer than needed, but not very good, and then edit it down to a better, shorter essay. I prefer to listen to EDM/Techno, classical, or non-English music when I write. If there are English lyrics that often slows down my typing speed, but if there are no lyrics or they are not in my primary language, I tend to go a little faster.

 

[A_Parked_Car]

I decided on a topic, came up with a research question, conducted the research, formed a thesis and wrote a 10 page history paper from 8pm the day before it was due until 5am the day of. I managed to get a C+, something I was perfectly happy with considering the amount of effort I put in.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

On Topic: Aside from my thesis, I found I would just write my papers while drunk. Then go back the next day fix any errors and cut out nonsense. I never gave a shit about page limits or the like, I believe the old saying that it's done when it's done.

Mind you, my culture regarding grades is far different. I only ever cared about passing, As or Cs didn't matter just the diploma. For the required, quite a few As.

My thesis, was hell though. 25 pages. Now I'm a very disorganized person who writes very casually, and it was very hard to bullshit for 25 pages. I actually had to block shit out and what not and I hated the entire experince.

I once did a 20 page paper in 24 hours. The professor gave me a 48/50. Why the 2 points off? There was a single grammatical error where I didn't capitalize a person's job title, and the only reason it was considered an error was because I'd been working off the previous version of APA formatting rather than the updated version from that year. My professor was kind of a ****.

Yeah, 20 pages in 24 hours with only a single grammatical error which was barely even an error and I still got points off. I was pissed.

You reminded me...

In my cognitive psych class (second-to-last semester of my second bachelors degree) my professor gave all of our term papers to her English professor friend so that SHE could dock us points for "imperfect" grammar. Why?

Because our professor COULDN'T FUCKING DO APA STYLE HER OWN MOTHER FUCKING SELF!!!!!!

My professor's friend docked me 10 points for ONE improper use of a comma (automatically bringing my paper down below 90%) which was bullshit because current (2009) APA guidelines allowed the use of that comma.

I'm sorry, but if you're a professor who can't do APA, then you don't deserve a job as a fucking PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR! Period. End of mother fucking story. And you ESPECIALLY don't get to use a friend to dock points off of your students' papers that you can't dock yourself because you don't fucking know how to.

If it wasn't that I already had a 112% in the class and was able to eat the points, I would have registered a complaint to the highest levels of the department. Also, that professor had taken a job with another college on the campus and was no longer an employee after the term during which she ALMOST cost me my 4.0 GPA. In other words, she was untouchable when she did what she did.

Load of fucking bullshit, that was...

(And no, my writing level is not at all on display in this post because I'm drunk as FUCK and don't give a shit about grammar.)

Can I add in, as an English major, I really don't think grammar actually matters it's just arbitrary rules of language they hammer into us otherwise an English Professor wouldn't have anything to grade. Language is all about getting the point across, and if one can communicate that, they're doing it right.

 

[Ladylotus]

Dear god, I have a recent one for ya.

In English, the professor was trying something new, so we had to have a media-heavy project worth 1/5 of our grade.

This required about a 5 minute (he wanted 5, minimum 3) video based on a term we covered in our English class.

So he gave us two weeks to do it, we had to borrow equipment from the school (if we didn't have any), film it all, edit it with no software to edit with named, and then turn in a written version.

I did all of that in about half a day after realizing just how close the deadline was.

He gave me a 96%.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Probably the worst when it came to writing papers was when I completely scrapped a paper that I had been working for weeks on less than 10 hours before it was due. I then had to quickly write another paper. It was only 7 pages, though (minus the works cited page). Still, I was really happy that I managed to get it done and even happier when I got a 98 on it. I forget what mistake I made. I think the page margin was off.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Try writing a 30 page script in a 12 hour period. That was an experiment and a half.

It's possible to do it, you just have to sit down and stay with it until you finish. Then take a brief break and return for proof reading.

You can do it!

 

[courier006]

At time of writing I have a psychology critique due tomorrow. The assignment was given to us at the start of the semester and I only started working on it two days ago.

 

[Conner42]

Hahaha, hohoho, hehehe! While I finished the one that was due yesterday, I have another one due tomorrow, but I think I'm on the right track. I wrote 4 pages on my first go and then decided to start over and now I have 4 other pages going at it with a different approach. Then I had the ingenious idea to just combine the two by the time I feel like that can be combined.

Nothing but pure genius!

Also, I'm really loving reading your stories! You guys seem to be a lot better at this than I am.