6th week: the essay crisis.

Sixth week is a funny one. It feels like your so close to the end that your body already wants to stop. You just want to go home and relax but you can't. You're painfully close to the end but not quite there yet. You have to keep going. In fact, there are still actually 3 weeks left, that's basically a month! In this state of wanting it all to be over, of wanting to be able to watch mindless TV for twenty minutes without feeling guilty about it, I had my first essay crisis of term. 

How do these things creep up on you just when you're feeling so in control? This time it was actually caused by too much preparation rather than too little. I had been sitting in the library for a few hours in between classes every day since it had been set, typing up ideas, reading critics etc. until I suddenly found myself, the day before the deadline, with 8 pages of notes, in a completely random order and often repeating themselves, feeling even more confused than ever. Now I don't mind writing new ideas down so much, when they're fresh in your mind, but re-organising what you have already written, looking back at those moments when you reached a new depth on knowledge, having lost it again, really makes your brain twitch (no - I didn't know brains could twitch either, but apparently they can.)  Aside from that, it also actually takes a lot more time than you might think. I sat on my computer in the library for 4 hours after dinner and decided to go home to get a fresher perspective. Much to my surprise, it actually really helped. 

On the bike ride home, as I cycled further and further away, I remembered that the world still continues to exist outside of college and actually, this essay that I was getting so worked up about was pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. As a result of this enlightening journey,(yes I know- you can tell I have just been writing a Dante essay - its difficult to turn off from essay mode!) by the time I got home, I looked back at my essay with a fresh perspective and rather than worrying about it so much, I just did it (yes Nike.) It got to 1am and I still hadn't finished but it wasn't due till 3pm the next day -although I had lectures in the morning - one of which was given by the tutor said essay was for- so I just woke up early the next morning and kept working on it. 

This is how days really roll into each other when you're essay writing. You forget about normal life routines, your room turns into a total tip, you don't even think about exercising and you eat whatever is closest to hand if you get hungry, even if it is not exactly 'nutritious.'  I finished my essay at 4pm on the dot, and sent it off, then jumped on my bike and cycled like crazy to get to an essay class which unfortunately started at 4pm on the dot too. I sat in the classroom, my mind still bursting with all these ideas from the essay and slowly adapted to being back in the real world. The lack of sleep and shock at how I had somehow managed to pull it off, send off the essay and get to my class on time gave me a crazy adrenaline rush and my heart was beating so fast I actually got a bit freaked out. You don't even realise how much your work has affected you, until it's over and your body finally allows itself to relax. At the same time though, I felt incredibly free and satisfied. I suppose what I felt was a sense of achievement, I had truly put my best into it - that's a pretty nice feeling. 

I had forgotten what that post-essay-crisis feeling was like. You feel kind of elated, almost hysterically happy, self-satisified, free. You feel a strange desire to do something wild, get drunk or run through a field, dance, sing, find some outlet for the tension that has built up inside of you up until that final moment when you click the send/print button. Of course this is fairly short-lived and unlike 1st and 2nd year when I would always have some social event to rush off to straight after finishing an essay as nice reward, as a 4th year, once the adrenaline had slowly drained away I was left feeling exhausted, although still equally satisfied, and rather than treasuring the moment of freedom and living in the moment, I thought about what was still left to do and how I needed to use this time for 're-fortification' in preparation for the next attack with the next deadline. So rather than going wild, I opted for a 'crazy' night in, in true 4th year style.

When I got home later I walked into the house with my books strewn across the table, my bed covered in a chaotic mess of clothes and things dotted all over the floor. I scrubbed the blue ink from my hand to make myself feel human again, tidied my room, took time to cook a wholesome meal and enjoyed my cosy night in, so that I would be ready to face it all again the next day. You think it's all over, it never really is. Final year is truly relentless.