Sententiae Draconis

I managed to get to campus by 10 am on a Sunday.

That's enough of an accomplishment for today right?

# reasons why this paper isn't finished yet.

Whine whine. Bitch Bitch. Moan Moan.

Why is it already 3pm and I still have a thousand words to write?

Paper, I hate you.

Celtic Scholars, please stop being so annoying.

Every now and then, usually when I'm writing a paper, I wonder to myself why (oh why!?!?) the hell do I want to go into academics anyway. I really dislike writing papers. I like the research and the finding out new shit part. And I like thinking about cool things (like Roman Britain), but when I have to smush it down onto the page my brain just rebels. And I get sick, or I go completely brain dead. Because NO! These ideas can't fit into the boundaries of an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper. They're nebulous and far reaching. Whole towns buried under piles of dirt and thousands of years of other people's lives.

If I smash my head against the keyboard will all my thoughts get into the word document?

I almost have 6 pages. Here is me 1/4 of the way done. Chugging tea and cough drops.

I did my Latin Sight Passage for the Honours Exams today. I am now 1/4 done the exam portion of my Honours degree. (That is of course, assuming that I passed.) I felt decently good about it. I couldn't tell where the piece I had to translate was from, but it was about Jason and the Argonauts, and the stuff about boats leads me to believe that Dr. O'B picked that passage for me on purpose. It's exactly his sense of humour.

I do want to know where that passage was from though, because it was one of those passages which helps to remind me that I actually do know what the hell I'm doing. I could see the grammatical constructions even though they were basically lying on top of each other, and I knew most of the vocabulary. Also it was prose instead of poetry.

But I'm done!

And now I've got to write a paper for tomorrow. C says I should wait until after hockey (I think he's mostly joking) and I totally could finish it afterwards (I've currently got an A+ in this class, and I haven't been putting a lot of effort into it), but I might write up an outline or something. And I should get a start on my Latin homework since my brother and some other folks'll be in town this weekend (yay!) and I probably won't have time to do anything then.

The paper is done.

So am I.

It sucks.

I'm going to go to bed.

So I agonized a little bit and then decided not to do the paper that's due tomorrow. This isn't as crazy as it sounds - honest. You see for my Roman history class there are four essay topics for the semester and I have to write on three of them. My plan was to do the first one so that I would still have a free skip later on, but I'm feeling kinda stuffed up and brain-dead. And also I'm just not interested in writing about how Suetonius' place in history effected his opinion and protrayal of Julius Caesar. Partially because I think it's bloody obvious (and I always feel like an idiot when I write papers that I think are obvious, even if they're exactly what the prof wants), and partially because it'll be nick-picky and boring to flick through fifty pages of Suetonius' Life of Julius Caesar to find good examples to proove said obviousness. And I do think that all three other topics are interesting:

Topic B: How would it seem to people at the time that Augustus had restored the Republic?
Topic C: Why are Trajan and Livy's Letters important as historical documents?
Topic D: Why would contemporary Roman's like the character of Lucius in Apuleius' The Golden Ass?

See? They're all much cooler than flipping through Suetonius to find proof that he's way more comfortable with one-man-rule than Republican Romans (after all it`s not like he`s lived in the Empire under good, solid Emperors for his whole life).

In other news I just got hit with the cold that's been going around. It sucks balls. In fact it sucks bälle. But on the up-side, L is making chicken soup for the purpose of curing colds. She says it is magical Jew-Soup and will fix us all (her included). I am very much looking forward to eating some.

In the mean-time I think I`ll do some readings for class (and not that paper I`m not going to do!) and drink a bunch of mint tea and maybe watch some television. Oh TeeVee - how I love thee.

The problem with writing research papers is that it is so easy to get distracted while you're researching for them - at least if you're interested in the subject. I'm currently writing a paper on how Ammianus Marcellinus depicts the Emperor Julian as a Roman Hero and I'm reading Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality by Timothy D. Barnes, and it is such a lovely read and so interesting that I would be happy to read all of it. The only problem is that it's not all relevant to my topic. Also I'm a slow reader. (This is more than one problem.)

He has a whole chapter on how Ammianus deals with Empresses and Eunuchs! Eunuchs! (I'm actually interested in reading more about Ammianus' treatment of eunuchs even though this has absolutely nothing to do with my topic. He really hates them, and every time they come up he's always very negative towards them. It's wonderful!)

In conclusion - I am such a nerd.

Why are conclusions so haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard?

I've completed my paper that's due tomorrow except for the conclusion (in great time too! Sure it was only 1500 words but still) and I can't figure out how to write the conclusion. I've been sitting here for the past half-hour procrastinating precisely because I can't figure out what to write.

Conclusions Suck.

I think I will try not to write

ETA: HUzzah! Done! And before eleven o'clock too!