It’s a bad feeling to wake up in the morning and think, do I have a paper due
today? I try not to do this very often, but it happened, nonetheless,
yesterday at 8:16 a.m. I habitually set my alarm for 8:15 every Tuesday and
Thursday mornings, but it takes me a minute or so to exit dreamland and
achieve sentience in reality. The next thought was equally abrupt but not
quite as disturbing: perhaps I have a test today. Then I remembered taking a
test in that class the last time we met. No, there would be no test. But…
my only answer lay in the syllabus enclosed in the three-ring binder in my
book bag. I didn’t have far to reach for it. My bed is queen sized, and I
have a custom of putting things of importance on my bed to deal with later.
I may be a slob, but I do make an effort to make my bed every day to give my
room at least one corner of order. Otherwise, my living space is an
excellent example of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in action. What I
found, however, is that I could sleep on half of my bed and leave all the
other things that had piled up during the day on the other side. Only rarely
do I have such a restless night that I inadvertently kick one of the items of
importance over and off onto the floor, waking up when whatever it was thumps
to the ground.

So sitting up in bed, I reached over and pulled my book bag over, opened it,
and flipped to the appropriate section. Two page paper on Rousseau’s Second
Discourse, due April 2. April 2, was that today? My slumber filled mind
struggled with this new concept of chronology. Yesterday was April Fool’s
Day, unless someone had been playing an elaborate joke on me. Today was
April 2. I had a paper due. I’d forgotten all about it. Modern Political
Theory was my first class of the day. There was no way I could read the
Second Discourse and write a paper on it when I’d set my alarm for just
enough time to get to school without being late. The frustration of these
realizations overwhelmed me. My first utterance that day was not an
uplifting one.

The good news is that I have a good average in that class. By handing the
paper in late, I only get docked one point from a four point scale. And we
write several papers. And they get averaged in with the tests. So I’m not
really in danger of much of anything as a result of my absentmindedness.
Well, not in this case. But this is the first paper I’ll have ever handed
in late. And that irritates me. Because it’s for no good reason at all.