This past week has been a rough one, to say the least. For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you know I’ve been fairly stressed out, mostly due to my own procrastination. I’ve been feeling like my brain might be melting out of my ears, and for a day or so, I thought it might actually be happening.
I had an 18 – 20 page paper that was supposed to be due on Friday, though my professor extended the deadline to tomorrow at midnight. Let me be frank with you, I procrastinated a ton on this assignment. It was assigned roughly six weeks ago, and I thought, “Oh, nah, I can do twenty pages, no big deal.” Dear self, never let yourself do that again. That was a terrible idea, and you cannot do twenty pages of a persuasive research paper in a week. I think the worst part of writing it was going in to put my opinion in, and realizing that I didn’t even agree with my topic anymore.
I’m an Anglophone, for sure. I love the English language, and I love hearing others speak it, but I don’t want to relax the standards of English in order to make sure that more people can speak it. Alas, by the time I realized that I vehemently disagreed with my persuasive topic, I did not have enough time or brainpower to re-do the work. Have you guys ever gotten to that point with an essay where you know that you completely disagree with it, maybe because you’ve put so much effort into perfecting it?
Another thing that has bothered me this week is Western Carolina University’s Literary Festival. I go to school in western North Carolina, and while I love the campus and surrounding area, the culture around here occasionally leaves something (a lot) to be desired. Because of my lack of love for some of the culture in our area, I don’t generally enjoy reading stories that are set in our area and based on Southern culture. It tends to be extremely depressing to listen to/read, and it just makes me sad for the most part. Unfortunately, WCU has decided that the only authors that are going to come to our Spring Literary Festival, which I am generally required to attend due to a multitude of English classes, are southern authors.
We get it. The mountains are awesome, but life here sucks. There are probably hundreds of authors who come from our area who don’t write horribly depressing stories about life in Appalachia. I know for a fact that there are stories about our area that are not that depressing. So why do all of the authors (for the second year in a row that I’ve experienced) read their most depressing stories about our area? I hate walking out of a reading, which I generally don’t enjoy in the first place, feeling like I wouldn’t mind hurting myself at this point, and I know others feel the same way. Find something happier to read for part of it, please!
Fortunately, as soon as I finish writing my articles for the Western Carolinian and finish my diversity scrapbook, I should be finished with most of my work for the week, which is great. Also, I got to spend a good portion of my afternoon with cats at a local shelter, which is always enjoyable. I made a small friend while I was there, too, which was great. 🙂 I just wish I’d remembered that I am mildly allergic to cats before I went. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been around more than one cat that I completely forgot about my allergies! Whoops!
Anyway, here’s hoping to a much less stressful week this week! 🙂 I hope all of you have great ones and that the sun shines on you!
Love, Ceillie